Twist
by OughtaKnowBetter
Summary: An old friend of Ducky's comes to town with more than one thing on his mind. Complete story.
1. Chapter 1

Twist

By OughtaKnowBetter

* * *

Obligatory Disclaimer: the important stuff belongs to them. The unimportant stuff belongs to me. Sigh; the story of my life.

Note: my very great thanks to FraidyCat and Alice I, without whose help this story would be badly written and confusing. If it continues to be badly written and confusing, it's my fault for not taking their advice.

* * *

"You coming down with something, McDeath-Warmed-Over?" Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo looked over at his colleague, clearly wanting to deliver better lines and not at all certain that the junior agent was up to it. _Aw, the hell with it_. "McGee, right now you make bread mold look appetizing. You look worse than Tom Hulce did as Mozart in _Amadeus_ in his death scene. You look—"

"Yes, we all can see how McGee looks, Tony," Ziva interrupted. She stopped to take a second look at the pitiful figure huddled in his desk chair. "McGee, you really do not look well. Perhaps you should take the day off?"

"Can't," McGee groaned, his voice emerging in a sore whisper. He leaned back in his chair, fists pushed into his temples to shove away the headache. "I need all my time off to work on my next novel. Gibbs'll kill me if I try to take another day off. It's not going well," he added peevishly. "I can't figure out how the corpse got into the pickle barrel."

"I'm sure there's a story in there somewhere, Timothy." Dr. 'Ducky' Mallard arrived in the bull pen of NCIS Headquarters in time to hear the last whispered line. His perusal was a bit more professional, peering into the junior agent's eyes. "Open your mouth; let me see your throat. Hmmm…yes. All appears normal, though perhaps a bit irritated and inflamed by overuse. Were you ill this past weekend as well?"

McGee managed a sickly smile. "Woke up with it this morning."

"Ah. Did you forget something, then? Your manners, perhaps?"

McGee froze. "Uh…"

Ducky glared. "Timothy, you promised to assist me with my plague-ridden computer this weekend. I _told_ you that Mother had been browsing upon websites that a lady of her breeding and years had no business visiting, and that I required some sort of barrier to keep her from such scandalous behaviour! If you found that you were unable to keep our appointment, Timothy, the least you could have done was to call," he admonished, then he again peered more closely at the computer geek. "Have you a fever?"

"I don't know—"

Ducky applied his hand to the back of McGee's neck. "Not at all. Cool as the proverbial cucumber. Not that such entirely rules out the infectious process. There are a number of illnesses which are notable for their lack of pyrexia. Why, I remember a time in Rouen—"

"Ducky…"

Dr. Mallard turned to greet the newcomer to the group, one who had just walked in to join them. "Ah, Jethro. I was about to regale our young colleagues with a tale of interest. Director Shepherd," he added in welcome to the small woman beside the silver-haired NCIS team leader. "This might intrigue you as well. It takes place in a small town in France, not far from the Belgium border—"

"I'm sure that it's very interesting, Dr. Mallard," Jenny Shepherd smiled, "but I'm afraid we have some urgent business. I need you and Gibbs in my office to discuss it."

"Me?" Ducky raised his eyebrows. "Director, I don't recall anything of note for the past several months. My patients tend not to complain, though some are quite vigorous in their efforts to inform me of their secrets. Why, I have a fellow waiting for me right now—"

"And he'll have to wait a bit longer, Ducky," Gibbs broke in. "The Director's office: now." Then he paused, staring at McGee. "McGee, you look like crap. I don't think I've ever seen you with a hangover."

"It's not a hangover, boss," McGee hastened to say. On the spot, he chose to take advantage of his voice's lack of volume and commitment. "It's…Maybe I'm coming down with something. Laryngitis, something like that. I'll be okay," he added quickly in an unconvincing hiss. "I just need a cup of coffee."

"Tea," Ducky contradicted, "tea with plenty of lemon and honey. Just the thing for restoring the vocal chords that have been done in by illness—or by shrieking various barroom ditties and the like at the top of one's lungs," he said pointedly. "I was in Argentina several years past, in a small bar not far outside of San Carlos de Bariloches, with a band of loutish _caballeros_, and I learned this remarkable—"

"Right. See to it, McGee." Gibbs turned to Jenny. "Your office, Director Shepherd?"

* * *

Jethro Gibbs took a moment to study both of the other people in the office. Both imposed significant impacts on his life, and in very different ways.

Jenny Shepherd had been a damn fine field agent, paired up with Jethro Gibbs, and he had done his damnedest to keep her alive during the learning process. It had worked: she was now the Director of NCIS. Probably the best looking one he'd ever seen; the majority that he'd worked for tended to be white-haired old men, men whose athletic reflexes had slowed with the years but whose minds were still as razor-sharp as ever. Some he'd respected and some…well, there were a few that he hadn't minded when they moved on to greener pastures. Jenny, now…there was a story, and one that Jethro didn't particularly care to revisit. Not that he didn't cherish those times, but it was best not to remember them too vividly when he was discussing business with a woman who could fire him. Red hair, big eyes, and slender figure that belied her ability to break someone's nose; yeah, Jenny Shepherd was a fire that could scorch him if he didn't watch himself. Jethro Gibbs didn't need wife number four, not when he had Jenny Shepherd for a boss.

He'd known Dr. Donald Mallard for even longer. Gibbs had forgotten for exactly how long, but he had worked with the man long enough to know that the majority of the long-winded stories that the medical examiner told had more than a grain of truth to them. Ducky had grown up in Scotland, and plied his trade in many areas of the world, not all of them particularly civilized. Gibbs had a tremendous respect for the man, for both his skills and his character, and the doddering old gent on the verge of retirement was an act that Gibbs appreciated it every time he caught a blue twinkle in his friend's eye.

Jenny Shepherd knew it, too, and she had less patience for it than Gibbs at the moment. No sooner had the trio seated themselves in the comfortable chairs in her office but she punched up a dossier onto the screen of her computer. She swiveled the screen around for Gibbs and Ducky. "Recognize him?"

Ducky did, immediately. "That is Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad, Chief of an area of Afghanistan, near Ghazni. A bit older than I remember him, but the years advance for us all." He focused on Director Shepherd. "Your point, Director?"

"My point, Dr. Mallard, is that he is coming here. An official visit, to strengthen relationships between not the main Afghan leadership, but between some of the outlying tribes in the mountains that separate Afghanistan and Pakistan," Jenny informed them. "He will also be speaking to several prominent groups here in Washington. That is," she added dryly, "assuming that he believes that trip can be made without him being assassinated."

"Assassinated?" Gibbs looked up. "Someone out to get him?"

"When it comes to Middle Eastern politics, someone is _always_ out to get someone else," Jenny reminded him. "Ansarad is no different. I could name several groups who would like to see him dead, starting with the Taliban and moving all the way through the Ku Klux Klan."

Gibbs raised his eyebrows. "The Klan knows he exists? I didn't think that they bothered much keeping track of politics outside of U.S. borders."

"Probably not, but I doubt that would stop them," Jenny agreed. "The point is, Ansarad is demanding protection; and, given that there have been at least three attempts on his life in the past year alone, I don't blame him."

"Not a bad idea, Director," Ducky told her. "It doesn't matter who the perpetrator is. Ali is a force for good in his country, and it is in our best interests to support him and his cause."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ducky, because you are about to participate in that effort," Jenny replied, keeping her smile small.

"I?" Ducky was nonplussed. "Director, it has been a number of years since I have routinely contemplated any field work, and I never excelled in the area of protection. No, my talents have always lain in the realms of medicine—

"You are going to persuade Chief Ansarad that he will be safe during his visit to Washington, Dr. Mallard," Jenny interrupted. "He's already said that he would come, but only if NCIS was responsible for his safety, and that you, Dr. Mallard, would oversee the details. For some reason, he seems to trust you."

"Yes. Well, there was that time in Kabul…"

Ducky seemed puzzled, thought Gibbs; puzzled and worried. This time the medical examiner trailed off, not meandering into the next story. "Ducky?"

Ducky shook his head. "This is all quite flattering, Jethro, quite flattering indeed seeing as how it comes from Ali. We originally met in London; I was finishing my medical studies and he was completing his own education in the geological sciences. I visited him some years later and spent some time teaching medicine to one of his sons and a few cousins. He would never let me plan any security arrangements when we spent time together, always insisted that his chief bodyguard do the honors. A clever fellow, that bodyguard, though not quite clever enough. I heard that he passed on in an unfortunate manner several years ago. Director Shepherd, I have no idea who Ali employs at present as his chief bodyguard."

"I do." Jenny punched up another file on her computer. "Iftihar Chelid, a fifth cousin to Ansarad. Fairly young, but he's been successful at keeping Ansarad alive for the past six years."

"Little Ifti?" Ducky's eyes lit up. "The lad was only five when I last saw Ali. I'm glad that he's made something of himself, though I worry that he's selected such a dangerous profession. Yes, I recognize the eyes," he said to the room at large, peering at the head shot on Jenny's computer. "He's grown into a fine-looking lad."

He brought himself back to the problem at hand. "When does Chief Ansarad arrive in Washington?"

"Day after tomorrow, which means that you and Gibbs had best get to it," Jenny told him. "Keep him safe, Ducky, Gibbs."

"We will, Jenny," Gibbs reassured her. "We will."

* * *

Ziva set a steaming hot cup of tea on McGee's desk. "McGee, you really do appear to be ill. You should go home. Gibbs will understand."

"Thanks, Ziva," McGee whispered. He picked up the cup and sipped at it. "Ow. That's hot. But good," he added. "Sweet."

"It's the honey," Ziva told him. "It will bring your voice back."

"It certainly is soothing," McGee agreed, his voice already sounding more solid. He glanced over to the stairs that led to the Director's office. "I wonder what they want with Ducky."

"Speaking of whom, you'd better do whatever it was that Ducky wanted you to do," Tony advised. "What was it, again, that convinced you to brave the gauntlet of the Welsh Corgis from hell?"

McGee winced. "Ducky's mother. Internet. Not a good mix. He wanted me to set up some child locks on his set up at home. It seems that his mother keeps letting in various viruses that lead to websites of ill repute." He winced again. "I can't think of what happened this weekend. I think I worked on my novel all weekend long, but I can't figure out why I forgot what I promised Ducky. I didn't get that far in my writing." He took another sip of the tea, color seeping back into his face. "Maybe I really was coming down with something. Maybe I fell asleep, and didn't realize it." He shook himself. "Reports. Got three of 'em to finish, and they're a lot easier to write than a murder mystery. They don't have plots to be concocted." He offered a weak grin. "At least something will get turned in, even if it isn't the next Great American Novel."

Ziva wasn't finished. "McGee, what is that on your wrist?"

"My wrist?" McGee looked at what the Israeli officer had spotted, pushing back the cuff to his shirt. "Just a bruise. I must have banged it, and forgotten all about it."

"Perhaps." Ziva shook her head, dismissing the topic. She glanced up toward the stairs that led to the Director's office. "Back to the original question: what do Director Shepherd and Gibbs want with Ducky?"

"What event is coming up on the Washington scene that Ducky might be involved in?" Tony asked. "Getting invited to the White House? Earning a Medal of Honor for Scalpel-Wielding?"

"That's it!" McGee said suddenly, sitting straight up in his chair. "A scalpel!"

"McGee, I was kidding. No one—"

"No, I mean the scalpel! That's how the corpse got into the pickle barrel!" McGee beamed.

"You're planning on cutting up the corpse into pickle-sized pieces in your next novel?" Ziva's face showed what she thought of that idea. "That would take an inordinate amount of time, even for a fictional character."

"No, Ziva." McGee was patient. "He uses the scalpel to pick the lock to the barn door."

Tony stared at the junior agent. "I'll wait until it comes out in paperback."

* * *

"I may be Ali's primary contact on this detail, Jethro, but I shall leave the planning of this monstrosity to you," Ducky said. "I cannot imagine why Ali has insisted that I be involved. I would be satisfied to share a meal with him and leave it at that."

"Probably because he believes that you can be trusted," Ziva observed. "That is very important to men of his stature. Trust is a sacred bond between you."

"Yes, I must agree, my dear." Ducky sat back in his chair. "However, I suppose I should at least appear to know what it is that I am approving, in case questions are asked. Explain this to me, Jethro, if you would."

Gibbs was well aware of his team, huddled in the bull pen. "McGee?"

McGee put an itinerary up onto the large LCD screen so that they all could see the same thing. "Chief Ansarad will arrive on a military jet at 1500 hours tomorrow," he told them, as if they couldn't see the information pasted on the wall. "The U. has taken the responsibility for transportation back and forth between Kabul and Washington. We'll greet him at the Naval Yard and take over security at that point. He will only have three people with him: his bodyguard Iftihar Chelid, and his two wives, Nadya and RoseMarie."

"RoseMarie?" Ziva raised her eyebrows.

"Formerly Lieutenant RoseMarie Lundquist," Ducky explained. "The lieutenant was an Army nurse. They met during the aftermath of a Taliban raid, and apparently fell in love. I understand that Ali was quite taken with her; she was the first woman that he ever actually courted. His first two wives were arranged marriages, to cement tribal relationships in the area. His first died in childbirth many years ago, and he is currently left with RoseMarie and his senior wife."

"She deserted?" Ziva asked. "The lieutenant, I mean? In order to marry him?"

"Not at all, my dear. The lieutenant served out her tour, returned to America to tidy up her affairs, and then emigrated to Afghanistan where she wed Ali. There is no evidence that the marriage is anything but happy, although I do understand that there is a bit of friction between our lady and Ali's senior wife. The former lieutenant doesn't seem to see the role of the lady in Afghani society with quite the same viewpoint."

"They'll be staying at the Hotel Ambassador, near the White House," Gibbs told them, bringing them back to the topic at hand. "We've taken over the top floor, with the Navy providing additional support at the stairs and at the elevators. Nobody gets onto the floor without our knowing about it. The danger points will be the transport between the Naval Base and the hotels where Ansarad is scheduled to talk."

"We've set up a caravan." Tony took over. "We've got an armored stretch limo, and we'll have an escort before and after. Gibbs and Ducky get to be inside the limo with Ansarad and his two. I'll be in the lead car, Ziva will take the back. McGee gets to monitor the satellite feeds, looking for anything along the way for a head's up."

Gibbs handled the next part. "Ansarad is scheduled to speak at several functions: there's a convention of businessmen, eager to set up corporations in Afghanistan, and Ansarad is eager to get their money and the jobs for his people. Next, he'll attend services at the Mosque Kashul Khan Khattak and meet with the elders of the community."

"That may be the most dangerous item on the agenda," Ziva observed. "Do all of his countrymen feel as he does?"

"Doubtful," Ducky said. "There are many factions, all of whom wish to rule, several of which may be represented at the mosque. Jethro?"

"DiNozzo, that's going to be your job," Gibbs said. "Get a list of everyone associated with the mosque and run them through the database. Figure out if there's likely to be anyone with a grudge. Let's identify 'em before Ansarad gets there."

"Me, boss?" Tony made a face. "Why not McGee? It's computer stuff."

"Did I _ask_ for your advice, DiNozzo? Do I need your permission to assign the members of _my_ team?"

"Uh…no, boss."

"I have other plans for McGee," Gibbs informed them.

"Me?"

"You, McGee. Ansarad's last speech will be to a collection of congressmen. We'll be coordinating with the Secret Service on that one."

"Got it, boss."

"Good, because we're not going to have that kind of support at Ansarad's first speech," Gibbs said. "It's just us and a few Marines. McGee, you've got twenty-four hours to come up with a schematic that covers all exits and allows for adequate supervision of the target. Figure out how somebody could sneak into the hotel to take a potshot at Ansarad, then plug the hole."

"If anyone wanted to assassinate Ansarad, why choose to do it in front of a dozen congressmen?" was Ziva's thought.

"True, but that speech is going to be more difficult to get to with a sniper rifle. They'd have to get a bead on him through a window, and I don't think that there are many windows with the right angle. Not with a line of sight to the stage where he'll be speaking."

"_I_ could do it."

"I'm sure you could, which is why we've got the Secret Service coordinating with us," Gibbs said. "I'm sure that a whole hell of a lot of people could, so McGee, I want you to tighten up whatever schematics the Service comes up with for that event, too. But first, plot out security for Ansarad's first talk at the International Businessmen's Trade Association dinner. That comes first, and we don't have a lot of support for that one. Ducky?" Gibbs turned to the medical examiner.

"Jethro?"

"Meet with your satisfaction?"

"More than adequate, Jethro," Dr. Mallard told him, playing the doddering old gent to the hilt, "especially considering that I have no idea what is going on."


	2. Arrival

"Sound check." McGee's voice sounded flat over the airwaves. "Home Base to Balkhi One. Come in."

"One, here." Gibbs grunted. He scanned the skies for the incoming jet, bringing his latest problem to the shores of America. "What the hell is this Balkhi stuff, McGee?"

"Famous Afghan poets, boss. I—"

"_I _advised him to use the term, Jethro," Ducky cut in, standing beside the NCIS team leader. "Ali is quite fond of the Afghani poets of the tenth and eleventh centuries, many of whom originated in the area of Balkh. If we must apply a name to this whole scheme, then let it be one that demonstrates a modicum of erudition."

"Balkhi Two, come in." McGee hustled to get the sound check over and done.

"Bulky Two, right here." Tony deliberately mispronounced the name. "Even though I am far from bulky. I work out regularly."

"Balkhi Three, also present." Ziva cut in on her own communications line. Her voice went cold. "Home Base, I see a flash of light near the landing strip. I'm going to check it out."

"Wait for back up, Balkhi Three," McGee instructed calmly.

"It is probably a piece of tinfoil."

"Or it could be something a lot more deadly." McGee was coordinating the operation, and he wasn't giving up control. "Balkhi Two, converge on Balkhi Three."

"I always liked converging," Tony remarked, working hard for the double-entendre and not quite pulling it off. "Where on the landing strip?"

"Next to flag AA3," Ziva replied, ignoring the attempt at humor. The unevenness of her voice suggested that she was already jogging toward the site.

"Slow it down, Balkhi Three. Let Balkhi Two catch up."

"Let Balkhi Two move faster." Did she actually say that? None of the others on the wire was going to admit to it at the moment. Afterward, Gibbs was certain, the Navy grunts that NCIS had grabbed to help out would be repeating it over and over, giggling over the NCIS in-fighting.

"Home Base to Balkhi One. Navy Three is requesting permission to land."

"Keep it up in the air for another circuit, McGee." Gibbs didn't have time for this codename nonsense. "You got a picture of Ziva's bogie?"

"Coming in now." There was a pregnant pause across the airway. "Balkhi One, I have a suspect fleeing the scene—Balkhi Three and Two, he's heading for the fence, the one across the airstrip! Hurry up; he's getting away!"

"Track him, McGee!" Gibbs ordered. "And keep that jet up in the sky!" That would be all that he needed: the plane landing and disembarking the V.I.P. who would promptly get his face shot off on American soil. Not on Gibbs's watch. He'd made his share of mistakes, but this wasn't going to be one of them.

"Tracking. Suspect is fleeing across the field, has now jumped the fence. Suspect is entering the wooded area. Unable to track suspect due to the trees, but I suspect that he is heading north. I just saw a flock of birds flying out of the area…Damn. Lost him. Head back to the airstrip, guys. He jumped into a car and is heading west on Route 66."

"License plate?"

"Virginia plates, maybe an F and a 5," McGee told him regretfully. "Mid-size sedan, silver. No make or model."

They could all hear the sigh gusting across the airwaves. "Wait until DiNozzo and Ziva are back in position, McGee, and then bring the plane in. Balkhi Two and Three," was that sarcasm in Gibbs's voice? "Balkhi Two and Three, _Home Base_ will be searching the suspect's nest after we get our man safely inside, searching for clues in the muddy fields. Right, McGee?"

Dejected: "Right, boss."

* * *

The jet took its own sweet time in touching wheels to pavement, but Jethro Gibbs wasn't unhappy. The longer it took, the less time he had to be responsible for.

The pilot did it up right, putting the wheels down on the ground within ten feet of the target zone and slowing the large vehicle to a stop. Wind generated by the huge jets blew past Gibbs's short hair, mussing that of his shorter companion. The jet dollied around to come off of the landing strip, taxiing along the perpendicular roadway to deliver its cargo to its destination.

"Drive up to the disembarkment steps," Gibbs ordered the driver of the stretch limousine. "Ducky, let's go greet your friend." He handed the medical examiner into the car and slid onto the back seat beside him. The driver gently touched the gas pedal to bring the limo as close as he could without running over anything.

Gibbs immediately got out of the limo, scanning the horizon for anything that looked like it could be a twin to the suspect that DiNozzo and Ziva had chased off. Nothing, but he knew that he'd feel a hell of a lot better once Ansarad was safely inside the armored limo.

The first person to appear at the passenger door to the aircraft felt the same way. Gibbs let his peripheral vision take in the details: tall and slender, with dark and even features. This was Iftihar Chelid, the bodyguard. He was young, that was clear, but the way the man surveyed his surroundings spoke of someone well-versed in the various methods that man could use to kill his fellow man. He wore western clothing, and Gibbs caught sight of a handgun in a shoulder holster hanging under his jacket. When he was satisfied that there was no immediate threat, Chelid allowed his charge to emerge.

Chief Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad stood a few inches taller than Dr. Mallard, but there the resemblance ended. Ansarad out-weighed his friend by fifty pounds or more, his girth only partially hidden by his own western-style clothing. In deference to his age, Ansarad's hair bore several gray threads to lighten the black. His features, too, wore the stamp of his lineage, and his dark eyes lit up at the sight of his friend.

"Donald!" he exclaimed, hustling down the steps, one hand lightly on the rail and the other outstretched to Dr. Mallard.

"Ali," Ducky greeted warmly. "It is good to see you again, old friend. Your children thrive, I presume?"

"They do well, though if they are not eating me out of house and home, then they are spending my money at your universities!" Ansarad slapped Ducky on the back before drawing him into a bear hug. "And you? You are well?"

"I am. Ali, let me present to you another old friend: Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, head of my NCIS team."

"I am overcome with joy to meet the friend of Dr. Mallard," Ansarad told Gibbs, extending his hand.

"A pleasure to meet you, sir." Gibbs returned the handshake, noting the firm grasp. This was a leader to be reckoned with, he realized; someone who stood prepared to shake the world to settle it into a better shape. "Let's get you into the limo. Not a good idea to give too many people the opportunity to take a shot at you."

"My wives." Ansarad waved at the boarding steps, where a woman close to his own age stepped out from the jet. Gibbs took a moment to observe her: heavy-set with enough food, face lined with the beginnings of wrinkles. It was hard to tell what her hair color was, for most of it was captured under a dark scarf. Only piercing black eyes stared out at him and at this foreign land, and, Gibbs fancied, those eyes weren't entirely pleased to be here. Gibbs wondered at that. Did Ansarad command her presence, and she obeyed?

The second wife followed, and despite the traditional scarf, Gibbs had no trouble identifying the woman as American. The former Lt. RoseMarie Lundquist was a tall and willowy blonde, and Gibbs privately thought that if Chief Ansarad hadn't scooped her up then plenty of his countrymen and Gibbs's own fellows would have tried. Big blue eyes twinkled, though not without a hint of worry, and there were also a few lines on her face as well that spoke of long hours of travel. Gibbs allowed his gaze to travel, noting that the Afghani lifestyle had likewise been good to the second wife. Her waistline too had thickened quickly—no, that wasn't it. Gibbs ordered his eyebrows not to react; at his age, Chief Ansarad was about to become a father one more time. Hopefully it wouldn't be Gibbs's problem: by the look of things, the younger Mrs. Ansarad was well into her third trimester but still with a few weeks to go. Gibbs held back the sigh of relief. Arranging for a stay in a maternity ward would have been just what he needed to turn this from a circus into a total disaster. If Ansarad wanted to keep his favorite wife close by—and Gibbs could already tell that Wife Number One didn't enjoy the same relationship with her husband—it only was Gibbs's problem in that it made for another body to protect; a body that wasn't going to be moving with any particular speed.

'Balkhi Two' and 'Balkhi Three' were already in place in the two sedans that would precede and follow the armored limo. A quiet note from McGee assured Gibbs of that item. The sedans were waiting several yards away, the occupants still scanning the landing fields for signs of intruders. The chatter on the comm. was mild, indicating that the previous suspect had been alone. Good; that made for an easier task. Gibbs blessed Ziva's alertness.

"My wives," Ansarad repeated blandly. "Which vehicle would you like them to take?"

_Crap_. Blunder number one, and fortunately one that could be rectified. The State Department had told NCIS that Ansarad wouldn't insist on separate vehicles for the two sexes, and they were wrong. Gibbs spoke into his comm.. "McGee, have Ziva take the wheel. Have her come over here and pick up the ladies."

"On it."

One of the black sedans ejected the former driver—male—and jerked into motion. It sped over to the group a little too quickly, but eased itself to a sedate stop as Ziva recalled that this mission demanded political grace.

Ziva stepped out and opened the back door. "Ladies," she greeted them, offering them the back seat.

_At least Ziva said it in English. Afghanistan doesn't have the most cordial relations with Israel. Don't blow it by pushing your heritage in their faces, Officer David._

Nadya, wife number one, mumbled something in return but the former Navy lieutenant gave Ziva a bright smile. "Thank you. It's a pleasure to visit my old home once again."

Ziva kept it polite. "Did you grow up near here?"

RoseMarie shook her head. "Upstate New York, not too far from the city. New York City," she clarified. "In that neck of the woods, there is only one 'The City'." She crawled into the car behind Nadya, making herself comfortable.

The comm. link whispered into Gibbs's ear. "Boss, I've commandeered another vehicle and staffed it with a couple of the Navy grunts that we grabbed. We'll use that as the final vehicle in the caravan."

"Good work, McGee." That shored up that detail. Gibbs nodded to Ducky. "Whenever you're ready, Chief Ansarad, Dr. Mallard."

* * *

"Copper, and some significant iron deposits," Ansarad said to Ducky. "I have them, and the West needs them. China also needs my resources, but between you and me, old friend, I would rather do business with the West. The Chinese have a way of enticing you into their clutches with promises of riches, and then demanding those riches back when they have destroyed any other hope of a competitor for your goods. No, I would rather request help from the West, whose strings are far less likely to tighten around my neck."

They were seated in the living area of the suite that had been cordoned off for Ansarad's use. The women had been removed to another room, ostensibly to rest, with a hastily requisitioned set of female bodyguards to supplant the lone Mossad officer. Chelid, the bodyguard, prowled around the edges of the room, looking for anything that might pose a threat.

"I suspect your first foray into public speaking in this country will be your best hope, Ali," Ducky said. "Americans are very willing to invest when there is a reasonable hope that they will earn money on their investment. World economy is poor, but the American economy is as strong as any on the globe; this is a good place to request aid."

"Yes, certain parties have let me know that they are already putting together a conglomerate that would invest in any business that I develop. If they could purchase the machinery that I need to dig the copper from the ground and partially refine it, we would both acquire great wealth." Ansarad rubbed his hands in anticipation. "This talk must convince them of my good intentions, and my ability to do what I say I will do. Have you any advice for me, old friend?"

"Just be yourself," Ducky said. "You won me over with your talk of the future of Afghanistan; you can do the same to eager entrepreneurs looking for a place in which to invest. The congressmen will be the formality, to allow the entrepreneurs to conduct business legally within your country."

"And I will require people who know both countries," Ansarad mused, "which is where the Mosque Kashul Khan Khattak will be most useful. The Mosque is filled with men who have knowledge of both worlds, information that will be valuable in forging this alliance."

"And women, Ali," Ducky said, wagging his finger. "Do not neglect the talents of the women. The West values them in a far different fashion, one that you would do well to heed."

"Yes, so my RoseMarie tells me." Ansarad's eyes lit up. "She is a hawk who is not easily tamed, that little one."

"I should say that you've tamed her well enough, my friend. Well enough to persuade her to marry you." Ducky smiled at the Afghani. "What ever possessed you, at your age, to take another wife? The rest of your children are all but grown."

Ansarad shook his head. "I could not tell you, Donald. All I know is that I saw her, and I knew that I must have her or die trying. Ah, that was an education for me, Donald, I will admit! I knew that Western women would not submit to an arranged marriage, even if I had come to America to seek out her father, but even I—educated in London—could not imagine the fierce independence of my RoseMarie. It was only when I learned to value that independence that she allowed me to advance my suit."

"You were clever to bring her with you, although I am concerned that it might not good for her so close to her time," Ducky observed. "Will she attend your speeches, or will she and your first lady prefer to see the sights?"

"Nadya?" Ansarad laughed. "Nadya would prefer to shop for things that she cannot get in Afghanistan. If you can arrange for a suitable escort, Donald, then by all means, send her out with my thanks and my wallet. Not the Israeli woman, Donald." Ansarad leaned forward. "I can appreciate her skill, but she is far more than a hawk. The Israeli is a viper, who can strike at your bosom in the blink of an eye."

"Officer David has proven her loyalty, Ali," Ducky told him stiffly. "I have trusted her with my life."

"I have no doubt of it, Donald, but think of the repercussions should something untoward happen," Ansarad reminded him. "If there is an attempt on my life, she will be blamed no matter what. One faction will believe that she fired the fatal shot and the other will tell the world that her inaction allowed it to happen. No, Donald, I believe your protestations of both her competence and her loyalties, but I must look beyond that to the bigger picture. Select another to escort Nadya where ever she wants. RoseMarie, however, will go with me to show you Westerners that my country and yours can work well together. She," and one corner of his mouth curved upward, "she will help me to conquer this land of yours!"


	3. Going Down

"Not too shabby, McGee." Gibbs looked over the set-up that McGee had designed, and approved.

It was the International Businessmen's Trade Association dinner, the first on the agenda for the visiting dignitary, and it was being held at the Marquis Hotel, in the largest dining hall. There were some two hundred guests, and Gibbs had had Tony, Ziva, and Abby working overtime to check out every one of them as possible assassins. Three had flunked the Abigail Sciutto sniff test, and had been 'dis-invited', but Gibbs didn't consider that a major setback. Three out of two hundred? Could have been a hell of a lot worse. Even the wait staff had passed muster; all except for four had worked there for several years and those four could barely spell Afghanistan, let alone be up enough on politics to consider an assassination attempt. No, personnel-wise, the place was as secure as it was going to get.

McGee's task was the rest of the facility, the environment in which the dinner and speech would take place. He set up a command center high above the diners with a window out onto the floor where everything and everyone could be seen. McGee sat in front of a bank of computers, all hooked into the security cameras so that he could monitor every corner of the hall and every entrance into the hotel.

"Even the bathrooms, McGee?"

"Even the bathrooms, Tony."

"Pervert."

"Bathrooms are very private places, Tony," McGee reproved. "I heard a story once of someone who smuggled pieces of a highly advanced technology past security, getting them through because they didn't look like anything special. This agent went to the bathroom, reassembled them, and was able to complete the mission."

"Yeah? Sounds like a movie to me," Tony said. "One with a very hackneyed plot. Where'd you hear that one?"

"From me, Tony," Ziva said, daring the man to object.

"Oh." Tony backed off.

McGee continued with his recitation. "We're not just hooked into the security system cameras, boss. I've set up stations where we're going to have guards. They'll notify everyone if someone tries to crash through. Based on intelligence that we received from the Afghani government, one of the methods of attack that can be used is a 'concerted effort approach'. There is a possibility that it will be used here in this country as well. Instead of a single sniper assassination, a group of attackers will approach this building, crash through the security and overwhelm them through sheer numbers, and then advance onto the target. We don't have enough security people to blockade a group attack at every possible entrance.

"What I've done to counter that," McGee went on, "is to set up these security checkpoints. If a simultaneous threat occurs, if several people try to crash through at one time, the computer will automatically threat-assess the situation as to where the through points are, and will pull the guards from the nearest points and divide them up to counter each access area. In other words, we'll use our resources to the fullest through rapid communications and deployment. If the assault team only tries to come through the front, we'll pull the Marines to the front. If they come through three entrances, the computer will direct a few Marines to each entrance. If we do experience an assault, I've also set up for the system to notify both D.C. Metro and the Naval Base. We'll have a SWAT team and a squad of Marines backing us up within minutes." McGee looked up, hoping for approval.

He got it. "Should work," Gibbs grunted. He peered at the diagram that McGee had on the main screen above the windows. "This telling me something?"

"Right. That's a diagram of the hall. The green dots are the Marines. You can see them posted at the doorways, checking people in."

"The yellow dots? There are a lot of 'em."

"Those are guests, boss. If there's someone that we think is acting suspiciously, I turn the dot purple, and I can track that person throughout the dinner." McGee did something with the keyboard, and a single purple dot floated around the yellows, mingling. "That's just an example; I don't know who I just tagged. But I'll be able to track this guest throughout the building."

"Even the bathroom?"

"Yes, Tony, even the bathroom." McGee hurried on, turning back to Gibbs. "Black will be Chief Ansarad, when he gets here. I'm making Mrs. Ansarad—both of them, I mean—I'm making them black as well, since they're part of his team. Chelid, too. Blue is us: you, me, Tony and Ziva. Even though I'm not going to show up on the screen, since I'll be up here monitoring the situation. I can track everyone, boss."

"Nice set-up, McGee." Ziva was openly approving. She had worn something silky and elegant for the occasion, yet something that she could move in quite easily. McGee had no doubt that a knife or two was strapped to a shapely leg underneath the silken trousers. "Is this something you learned in your American training? It sounds quite intricate."

McGee beamed. "No, this is something I dreamed up. I've always wanted to design a set-up like this, but never had the opportunity."

"I see." Ziva started to say something else, when she was interrupted by the comm. link.

It was Ducky, resplendent in a tuxedo, already in place among the growing number of guests. "Jethro, I need your assistance, if you please."

"Be right there, Ducky." Gibbs turned to Tony and Ziva. "Places, everyone. Showtime in five minutes."

Gibbs hurried down the stairs from McGee's command center, the other two in his wake. Ducky was waiting for them toward the stage where Ansarad would make his speech, along with Ifti Chelid. Guests were already mingling, drinking various beverages and accepting hors d'oeuvres from waiters bearing silver trays. Most wore Western-style dress, but here and there a turban or some other head gear made an appearance. The words floating through the room were a polyglot of English, French, Pashtun, and a host of other languages over which Gibbs could only goggle.

"Jethro, Ifti is concerned about Officer David—"

Chelid broke in. "You cannot employ an Israeli Mossad agent at a function like this," he insisted. "There will be many influential people here who will be offended. Have her leave."

"Not a chance." Gibbs was certain. "We don't have many people who speak Pashtun or Tajik. I need her on the floor, mingling."

"Unacceptable!" Chelid's voice was rising. "Unacceptable! I will tell Ali Ansarad not to attend unless she is dismissed. This is not open to negotiations, Gibbs. Either she goes, or Ansarad does not appear and the conference is ruined."

"Ifti—" Ducky tried to intervene.

"I am sorry, Dr. Mallard, but this came straight from Ali Ansarad's own mouth. Replace her, or the conference is off."

Gibbs tightened his lips. "I don't like being told how to run my security detail, Chelid."

"Nevertheless, this is how it will be," Chelid insisted. "It is a small thing. It is one person."

"This is politics, Jethro," Ducky reminded him. "The Afghani have never had a cordial relationship with the Israelis. It's not something that can be resolved, not at this moment in time."

"All right." Gibbs gave in only because the alternative was worse. "Ziva, I'm reassigning you."

"Gibbs—!"

Gibbs overrode her objections. "DiNozzo, you're on stage, close by Ansarad."

"As am I," Chelid put in.

"And Chelid," Gibbs agreed. "I'll take Ziva's place on the floor, mingling, seeing what I can pick up. Ducky, you do the same. You take the front of the hall, and I'll hang out near the back."

"Gibbs!"

"We'll keep in contact through McGee," Gibbs continued as if Ziva hadn't spoken. "McGee, you got that?"

"Got it, boss." The sound echoed in several earpieces from above.

"Gibbs!"

Now Gibbs did turn on the woman. "You have a problem, Officer David?"

"Yes, I have a problem, Gibbs! Neither you nor Tony speak any of the Middle Eastern languages, and—"

"I gave you an order, David."

"And it is a foolish one, Gibbs! You need—"

"Outside, David." Gibbs gave her his full attention.

"Gibbs—"

"I said, we'll talk about this outside, David. Now." Gibbs gave her a little shove, hustling her out through the door of the hall to the lobby beyond.

DiNozzo couldn't help but notice the victorious smile that Chelid was unsuccessfully trying to hide. He kept rigid control over his own feelings, battling down the urge to throttle the bodyguard. He forced a tight smile. "I guess it's just you and me up there on the stage. With the target," he added.

* * *

Gibbs shoved her through the door to the lobby, not taking 'no' for an answer.

"Gibbs!"

"Keep your voice down." It was entirely different tone than Ziva had expected. There was no anger in it at all; at least, none that was directed at Ziva. "Act like we're arguing."

"We _are_ arguing." Ziva gestured upward toward the ceiling.

"No, we're not. We're trying to figure out why Chelid and Ansarad are so eager to keep you out of there. You think that there's someone that they're trying to contact?"

Ziva made another angry gesture, but the expression on face was thoughtful. "Perhaps. I can't think of any other reason that they'd want to get rid of my presence."

"Except for the fact you're Israeli." Gibbs almost smiled.

"Gibbs, you can't let him win. You need me. I'm best placed to spot—"

"Yes, you are," Gibbs agreed, "but not if Chelid keeps pointing you out and screeching that you're the enemy. You won't hear a thing from anybody. McGee," he called, activating his comm. link.

"Boss?"

"I'm sending Ziva up to you. Let her listen in on conversations from where she can't be seen."

"Uh, boss?"

"What, McGee?" A head slap wasn't far behind, if Gibbs had to run up the stairs to deliver it.

"Uh, boss, this set-up won't do sound."

"What do you mean, 'won't do sound'? We're talking, aren't we?"

"Yes, but the kind of sound you mean can only be piped in through multi-dimensional microphones, and I didn't think that we'd need anything like that…" McGee let his voice trail off.

"You mean, I can't have Ziva upstairs with you, listening to conversations down here."

"Uh…yes, boss."

"I can read lips," Ziva jumped in.

Gibbs frowned. "Not well enough for this. It would be hard enough if you heard the conversations through a mike, let alone reading lips with an audience that's constantly turning this way and that. No, Ziva, I want you down here, in the lobby. You think you can keep out of sight enough so that Chelid and Ansarad don't spot you?"

"I can do that," Ziva promised. She smiled tightly. "When Chief Ansarad arrives, I can always hide in the bathroom with Tony's perverts."

* * *

McGee could barely hear what Chief Ali Ansarad was saying during his speech through the glass in the command center, but it didn't matter. What did matter was the roving dots on the schematic on the screen over the windows. Those dots were corresponding nicely with the actions of the players in the hall below. The big black one, Ansarad, was positioned on stage with another black one—Chelid—beside him and a blue representing Tony DiNozzo on the other side. Through the window McGee could see both the bodyguard and Tony standing stock still, scanning the audience for anything lethal and unexpected. Tony wore dark shades and an equally dark and well-tailored suit, and McGee felt a flash of envy. McGee himself wasn't ill-favored, but Anthony DiNozzo put a lot of time and effort into sartorial flair. McGee wasn't about to compete with that.

There were two more blue dots: Ziva and Gibbs. Ziva's blue dot showed her to be in the lobby outside. Now that the crowd had moved in, Ziva had spent her time making the rounds from Marine to Marine, each soldier guarding another entrance, ready for a screeching car to announce the arrival of a hit squad. Gibbs's blue dot was equally as mobile but on the inner aspect of the hall, ambling slowly but purposefully around the edges. There were two more black dots, stationary, seated at the head table but to the side as befitted two honored but instructed to be quiet wives. McGee grinned; he'd only been introduced to the second Mrs. Ansarad briefly, but she didn't impress him as the type to sit quietly in the corner while the men talked over her pretty little head. He sighed, turning back to his work. Not his problem; if the Ansarads were happy with their chosen course, who was he to argue?

McGee glanced at the clock: 8:53 PM. All was on schedule. The first course had been served, and the main course was being deliberately delayed until after Ansarad had concluded his remarks. Those remarks should finish sometime in the next seven minutes, and nothing untoward had yet happened. McGee allowed himself to feel cautiously optimistic.

So why were his hands trembling? Why the feeling of anxiety that was rising through him like a geyser about to blow?

McGee fought to get himself under control, tried to persuade his hands to stop shaking, when a spike of sheer _agony_ drove itself through his head. His vision went black under the onslaught.

A migraine? Timothy McGee didn't get migraines. Something really bad was happening inside his skull, something unrelated to what was happening downstairs on the stage.

Or was it? Was it unrelated? Some little memory tried to squirm its way out through the waves of pain. McGee fumbled for the switch to the comm. link, couldn't find it through the blackening haze…

* * *

"McGee?" Gibbs jerked his head up, stepped back among the heavy drapes to make his actions less noticeable. Whatever it was, had come through his earpiece. Gibbs wasn't even certain that the sound had been human. It could have been electronic feedback.

Except for one thing: McGee hadn't responded.

"McGee?" he repeated, hoping that the junior agent would answer.

Nothing. Dead air.

What the hell was going on? Why wasn't McGee answering? Ansarad's speech was going well, sucking in the businessmen like pigs at a trough, with no signs of impending mayhem except among those businessmen who wanted to grab the whole enchilada for themselves. There shouldn't be anything happening in the control booth command center. The only way to get upstairs to the command center where McGee was sitting was to go through the lobby, and the only way to get through the lobby was to go through Ziva David and a couple of Marines, and Gibbs defied anyone to get through the lobby through Ziva and company without making at least a little bit of noise to alert him.

No, there was definitely something not right. Gibbs himself couldn't leave his post, not to check out something that might be nothing more than a crossed wire, but he could assign that task to someone who wasn't even supposed to be here. He tapped his comm. link once again. "Ziva?"

"Gibbs?"

"I'm not getting a response from McGee. Check it out."

"On it."

* * *

Mossad Officer Ziva David hadn't always been assigned to NCIS. She hadn't always been an agent in investigative services. She had been trained in interrogation techniques, and, more importantly, she had been trained in espionage.

That was a whole other set of rules.

Those rules demanded that success be measured by the outcome. It didn't matter if one adhered to the Geneva Convention if a mushroom cloud rose over Tel Aviv. The difference between a bomb exploding on top of a house, killing the children within whose only crime was to be born Jewish, and a knife slipped between the ribs of the monster who aimed that bomb, was that only one monster died and the children would live to produce scientists and thinkers and leaders of their generation. Ziva had played by those rules. She had trained to be an assassin in the dark, a spy to slip a knife between those ribs so that innocent children and not-so-innocent adults lived to send her on another mission. She had trained in the ways to make a single man go against everything he had ever believed in, and thank her for the privilege.

Officer David hadn't always been assigned to NCIS, and the pieces suddenly clicked.

There was a bruise on McGee's wrist, now fading away into green. He could have banged it carelessly—or it could have been from a needle slipped into a vein, delivering a devil's brew to an unsuspecting mind.

McGee hadn't kept his appointment with Ducky's computer over the weekend. That McGee had spent the entire time writing—that, Ziva could believe. That the appointment had slipped his mind? Not possible. There was only one thing that McGee loved more than his writing, and that was computers. To add bad manners and not call Ducky to cancel? Impossible. Tony, yes, but not McGee.

Now McGee wasn't responding.

The pieces clicked.

Things were about to happen. _Bad_ things were about to happen.

"Stay alert," she told the nearest Marine. "Something is going down."

Ziva headed for the stairs at top speed.


	4. Hitting the Fan

Too many steps. There were too many steps on the staircase leading up to McGee's command center, and Ziva dashed over every one of them.

Time was of the essence, if what she believed was true. The key to the safety of Chief Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad, friend to Dr. Ducky Mallard and the man who would bring prosperity and stability to his nation, lay not in the assassination strike force that undoubtedly sat waiting outside for the signal to move forward. Instead, the key lay in the hands of the one man who would give that signal: McGee.

Not by choice. If McGee knew what he was about to do, he would be horrified.

The bastards in the dark had taken McGee's soul. Ziva knew it as clearly as she knew her own name. They had taken him last Friday night and subjected him to techniques to break his mind and his spirit, and then put him back together again just enough to avoid suspicion. To his friends and colleagues, McGee had merely worked on his novel all weekend long to the point where he had forgotten any obligations he had contracted toward others. The lingering physical effects had been passed off as illness. Had the subject been Tony DiNozzo, they would have laughed it off as a hangover.

Ziva had seen the results before, and knew the signs. She could point to a world leader and tell them that the leader still walked the earth because she not only knew the signs but had put them there in the first place.

She was growing soft. She hadn't believed that anyone would use this particular tool from hell in this country. The techniques were difficult to learn and difficult to use, and only a few had the will to complete the training. It was not a thing to be wasted.

That meant that Ansarad had enemies more powerful than they thought, that someone feared the Afghani chieftain and would go to great lengths to silence him. There could be no other explanation.

Ziva reached the top of the stairs and flung open the doors, terrified at what she might see. If they were lucky—if _McGee_ was lucky—then he would still be sitting in his chair, fighting the compulsion laid upon him.

McGee was not sitting. Instead, he had staggered to the wall where the power switches sat, one hand holding his head and the other outstretched to cut the power. Ziva went cold; if the power went off, so did the lights and the security measures. Everyone and everything would be thrown into chaos. A strike force could mow through the crowd and kill dozens, including Ansarad. A strike force with night goggles could take out the hope of Afghanistan in a single shot.

McGee was about to cut the power.

He knew it. He saw her arrive, and hope warred with the agony in his head. "Ziva," he begged. "Don't let me do this!"

No more deception. McGee knew what had been done to him, was fighting it as best as he could.

His best wasn't good enough. His hand moved toward the cut-off.

Ziva's gun was in her fist, and she never remembered pulling it from her holster. "McGee, don't!"

"I—I can't!"

Jumping across the room: too slow. The switch would be thrown, and it would take time to reset all the circuits. A bullet would fly faster. Ziva aimed for McGee's arm, knowing that the force of the projectile would throw him back from his target. Security would be maintained.

McGee _twisted_, reaching for the cut-off switch.

Ziva's bullet entered McGee's back, slamming him against the wall with a cry. McGee slid down the wall, arm still reaching for the cut-off.

Tears streaming down her face, Ziva readied another shot but McGee fell back, arm dropping limply to his side. He flopped over onto the floor, a pool of blood seeping out from underneath him.

Ziva dashed to him. "McGee!" Fumbling, she slapped at her comm. link. "Gibbs!" she screamed. "Get an ambulance!"

* * *

It was going down. Jethro Gibbs longed to pull out his gun, could see DiNozzo twitching up on the stage with the same urge. There was a tension in the air that he could _feel_.

He couldn't leave his post. Going to the lobby to alert Ziva was the most that he could do. The Marines, good men all of them, would already be on their toes. They would know what it meant, that the NCIS agent had been sent to the command center to check out a potential problem. They would be ready. Even Ducky knew something was up, that the elegant Waldorf salad the waiters were bringing out was likely to end up scattered on the floor once Ducky and two hundred others dove beneath the meager protection that the tables would offer. Ducky's table, Gibbs knew, would end up tilted on its side, with a dapper medical examiner taking aim from behind it. Dr. Mallard delighted in his pretense of being a doddering old gent, but there was still plenty of fire behind those twinkling blue eyes.

There—he heard it. Gunfire, from the lobby! The Marines wouldn't fire first, but they would if something on wheels were bearing down on them. This was it! Gibbs swung around to join them. If he could keep the enemy strike squad from getting close to Ansarad…

_Crash!_ Glass shattered, and an engine roared. Gibbs had called it right; he darted a look past the doors into the lobby to see that a huge Hummer was now part of the lobby design. The massive vehicle had plowed through the front doors, men waving guns emerging from the interior of the vehicle. Even as he watched, one of the Marines went down, clutching his leg. The other cursed, risked his life to pull his comrade out of harm's way.

Eight of them, was what a swift look told Gibbs. Eight of the bastards, black ski masks on their faces, each armed with something semi-automatic sounding. His handgun was going to be a pea shooter next to those weapons.

Couldn't let them have the easy way in. Gibbs fired a quick three shots, forced 'em back, even getting one of them in the leg.

Not enough; they advanced, crashing through his position, two of them taking him hand-to-hand and the other two aiming over the crowd. Four more headed off in different directions to spread chaos and destruction. Gibbs heard shots of a different caliber, knew by the sound of it that DiNozzo had also just emptied his own handgun. Yet another caliber—that must be the bodyguard, Chelid. There was Ducky, the gunfire from the tiny handgun small enough to fit in a cummerbund dwarfed by the semi-automatic fire all around.

Hand-to-hand: Gibbs blocked the fist coming at his face, followed it up with a palm strike to a deserving nose. Damn, missed, got the jaw instead, rocked the bastard back on his heels. Second attacker moved in; a dodge meant that the blow ripped Gibbs's comm. link from his shoulder and little more. Another strike; bastard got in a lucky blow below the gut. Gibbs folded, knew he couldn't afford to leave himself vulnerable like this. He forced himself back upright in time to dodge another gut shot, went on the offensive. He grabbed the outstretched arm and _yanked_.

Success! The arm exited the socket, dislocated and useless until someone had the kindness to replace it where it belonged. Gibbs wasn't going to do it. The attacker screeched in sudden agony.

The crowd had begun to panic in earnest, with most running toward the side exits. That was okay with Gibbs; the fewer civvies to worry about, the better. One fell—shot in the back? No, just tripped over his own two feet. The man scrambled back upright and scurried away, slipping and sliding on the soles of brand-new dress shoes.

There was a scream—Wife Number One, staggering back. No sign of blood, just terrified. A yell from up on the stage where Ansarad still stood, open-mouthed with shock. One of the attackers took aim. Gibbs cursed; the man was too far away and Gibbs's gun was out of ammo. Ansarad was a dead man—

DiNozzo leaped and took Ansarad to the floor, rolling the pair of them behind the podium and out of immediate danger. Chelid jumped in front of them, pouring out the bullets in an effort to beat the enemy back.

It worked. Shrieking and yelling curses, the attackers gathered their wounded and pulled out of the hall, leaving the demolished Hummer behind. Gibbs started to pursue, then halted. What the hell was he thinking, going after well-armed thugs with nothing more than his pocket knife? Getting himself shot up wasn't going to help matters.

Ansarad. Had the man been killed? Gibbs's career would be in the toilet—not that he cared—let alone the country's reputation, if that had happened. All chances of shoring up Afghanistan's economy would be gone in a heartbeat if…

No, there he was, crawling to his feet, helped up by his bodyguard. Not a scratch on him, thank heaven, nor the bodyguard. Who in the audience? There must have been fatalities, there were enough bullets buzzing around. Ducky?

"Right here, Jethro." Ducky got up stiffly, tucking the small Beretta back into his cummerbund, which is how Gibbs realized that he'd spoken aloud. "Anthony!"

"Just a scratch, Ducky." Tony staggered to the edge of the stage, leaving Ansarad and his bodyguard in the background and in safety. Looking at him, Gibbs had his doubts. How badly was the man hurt?

Ducky too had his doubts. The stiffness disappeared, and he assisted Gibbs to help Tony onto floor level and onto the chair that just moments ago Ducky himself had occupied. "Off with the jacket, Anthony. Let's see how serious this is."

"Just winged me," Tony groaned. Then he plastered a grin onto his face, and adopted his best John Wayne imitation. "Always wanted to say that, pilgrims. Ouch!" he exclaimed, losing the accent. "Ducky, take it easy, there!"

"You are correct, Mr. DiNozzo. The wound appears superficial, although I should recommend an x-ray or two with a trip to the local emergency department for a few stitches—my heavens! Jethro! It's Mrs. Ansarad!"

Nadya, Wife Number One, moaned in anguish, though it hadn't been she who had been hit. Gibbs at first thought that it was, then realized that it was Wife Number Two, the former Lt. RoseMarie Lundquist, who was lying in Nadya's arms, her own hands clutched to her belly. Gibbs cursed under his breath, leaving DiNozzo behind. Not only was the young woman a visiting dignitary and a former naval officer, but pregnant as well. If she died, it would be a double homicide.

Sirens blared, and squads of both D.C. metro police and more Marines barreled in. _A little late, guys!_ "I need a medic over here!" Gibbs bellowed.

For a wonder, they heard him over the crying and the moaning of the people who were left. Most of the businessmen had fled, prudently keeping their hides intact, but a few had tripped and fallen, calling out for help. Gibbs didn't have time for them. Let the ambulance people get to them when they could; right now this woman in front of them was the greater need and the need wasn't merely medical. The murder of the wife of Ali Ansarad would have greater implications than any Gibbs cared to imagine. Ducky took over, directing the medics to provide a greater level of care than they could have, applying pressure to the wound and administering aid.

Ali Ansarad dashed to her side. "RoseMarie!" he cried out. "Heart of hearts!" He clutched at her hand, panic-stricken. "Donald," he begged, "do not let her die! You cannot let her!"

"We're doing our best, Ali." Ducky moved in and out, still applying pressure to the gaping wound. "We must get her to surgery right away. You there; bring the stretcher over here. You, yes you: open up the intravenous. This woman needs all the fluids that she can get."

"Donald!"

"Out of my way, Ali." Ducky didn't have time to play solicitous host. He had a dying woman on his hands. "Onto the stretcher, on three. One, two, three." The husky medics lifted the injured woman onto the wheeled stretcher, shouldering her husband out of the way. "Jethro, I'd best accompany Mrs. Ansarad to the hospital. Her condition is grave. Ali, you would do well to stay here with Agent Gibbs. There is nothing that you can do for her, and you will be in greater danger if you travel to the hospital. I will keep you informed through Gibbs."

"Go, Ducky." Gibbs overrode the incipient objection from Ansarad. If Ducky thought that a doctor would be needed in the ambulance, Gibbs wasn't about to argue. The rest of the casualties were relatively minor. Even the Marine who'd caught one in the leg in the first volley was being carted off by another ambulance, and the remaining medics thought that it would be a fairly minor scratch, like DiNozzo's.

Speaking of whom… "DiNozzo?"

"Boss?" Tony was right with him, cradling his arm with his other hand but still game.

Gibbs regrouped. "We need help, DiNozzo. We need additional personnel as bodyguards. We need to get Ansarad back to the hotel and safety, and we'll need a guard for Mrs. Ansarad at the hospital."

"Already on it, boss. I spoke to the commander of some of these fine boys." DiNozzo indicated the squad of Marines who had come in response to the attack. They were already picking up some of the debris, assisting those who hadn't fled to get back onto their feet. "McGee's signal flare went up, right on schedule. Lieutenant Demorelli is willing to let us borrow his troops for the duration."

"Good. Assign two men to stick to Ansarad's side, and another two to the first Mrs. Ansarad. Have another pair get the armored limo from the garage. I don't care what Ansarad says," Gibbs decided grimly. "We're only protecting one vehicle, with Marines inside and out. We're getting him back to the safety of the hotel as fast as we can." He looked around, and found someone missing. Two someones, actually, and cold flared through him. "McGee's signal worked. The Marines are here; they got called in. But McGee isn't, and neither is Ziva."

Tony caught on quick. "Why didn't they come downstairs?" He reached for his comm. link to call, and found it missing. "Wha—? There it is," he said, spotting the device on the floor of the stage. "Must have come off when I tackled His Highness."

Gibbs felt for his own comm. link, and recalled that it had left his possession during hand to hand combat. That didn't help his feeling of unease. Where the hell was Ziva? She couldn't have called, not with his comm. link out of commission, but anything that kept the Mossad officer from joining into a fight like this would have to be significant, and anything that significant meant—_crap_. He looked upward to where the glassed in enclosure was, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, and in this setting even that seemed remarkable—and worrisome. Gibbs reached for his gun, remembered that it was out of bullets, somewhere littering the floor of this place. "Wait here. I'm going to go check out McGee's command center."

"I'm going with you." The lines of pain on Tony's face were overridden by his determination—and his fear.

Gibbs not only borrowed one of the Marines's weapons, but he borrowed the Marine that went along with it. Silently they ascended the stairs that led to the command center. Gibbs held a finger to his lips, preventing anyone from saying a word.

He _listened_. He heard the sound of breathing, of one—no, _two_—people. Two people: Ziva and McGee. Was there three? Was there a third person in the command center, silent and waiting for someone to open the door and get blasted with bullets?

At Gibbs's signal, the Marine gingerly pushed open the door to the command center, ready to jump if a swarm of bullets flew out at them.

"Gibbs!" It was Ziva, and there was more fear in her voice than Gibbs had ever heard before. "Gibbs, get in here now!"

It wasn't a trick. No terrorist in the world could make Ziva lure Gibbs into a trap. Gibbs shoved the Marine out of the way.

Ziva turned tear-stained eyes to his, and Gibbs sucked in his breath. Ziva was covered in blood with a smear on her cheek—but it wasn't her blood. It belonged to Special Agent Timothy McGee, who lay helplessly in her arms. Both of Ziva's hands were pressing over his torso, trying to prevent more blood from emerging, small leaks escaping from between her fingers. McGee's face was slack and lifeless, with another dribble of blood bubbling from his lips with every tortured breath he inhaled.

Minutes. McGee had only minutes to live. And Gibbs had already sent off the ambulance with the only doctor in the house to carry the second Mrs. Ansarad to the naval hospital in equally grave condition.

"Dammit," Gibbs breathed. "DiNozzo, get the medics up here." There wasn't another damn thing he could do except to pray.


	5. Personal

_Dammit. Dammit_. Gibbs sat white-knuckled, shoving his feet against the floor to keep from being thrown from his seat as the ambulance took the turn on two wheels. One of the medics cursed under his breath, steadying the pole that held the squishy soft plastic bag of life-giving intravenous fluids.

_Baby-faced, that was McGee. Practically still had peach fuzz on his chin. Never should have taken him onto the team. Too young, too innocent, never mind that he graduated Quantico with top marks from his instructors. Never should have accepted him, even though the need for a computer techie was so great. Let my desire for someone who knew his way around cyber-space override my good sense, and now this man was going to pay for it with his life. Didn't belong in harm's way._

_Dear Lord, what was Abby going to say?_

"He's crashing." One of the medics went into action. "Let's tube 'im, Rich. You or me?"

_They're still figuring out who can do the better job?_ "Get the damn tube into him," Gibbs growled, fighting to keep himself under control.

They ignored him; they'd heard worse, and weren't about to let feelings get in the way of doing a good job, either Gibbs's or their own.

"Visualized the chords."

"I've got the cricoid. Go ahead."

Gibbs couldn't watch. There was something very _wrong_ about handling the body of a man that Gibbs had worked with as though it was a piece of meat to be tenderized. One man held the tube in place while the other twisted bands of heavy tape around to make certain that the removal process would be as painful as possible. The rest of the tenderized sirloin was strapped to the stretcher with heavy canvas belts that could probably do a better job at immobilization than the handcuffs in Gibbs's back pocket. Why all the effort for a near corpse that wasn't going anywhere under his own power?

_Please go faster_.

* * *

Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs outweighed Director Shepherd by more than a hundred pounds of muscle and sinew, and none of it mattered. She backed him up against the wall of the waiting room.

"You're off the case, Jethro," she told him.

"Jenny—"

"You're not making good decisions, Jethro." Jenny wasn't letting up. "Tony's arm is in a sling, Ziva is out of the field pending the investigation, and McGee may not make it through the night. Agent Gibbs, you are off the case," she repeated, her chin held high. Then she softened. "I wouldn't be doing my job if I let you continue, Jethro. You're exhausted, and your team is devastated."

"Jenny, I have to." Gibbs wouldn't let go. "You heard Ansarad. He won't let anyone except Ducky handle security, and Ducky won't trust anyone except me. Not for this."

"Then tell Ducky to trust someone else," Jenny returned promptly. "If he really trusts you as you say, then he'll trust whoever you name to do the job."

"Who?" Gibbs looked away, tight-lipped. "Who the hell am I going to get to take over? Fiorello, Pavlovich, and Smith are on assignment with their own teams, and I sure as hell am not going to tell Ducky to trust that ass DePaul. I'm going to have to look Ducky in the eye and tell him that I trust who, Jen?"

"Me," she said clearly.

"You?"

"Me."

Gibbs stared at her. "Is that an order, Madame Director?"

"I had hoped that I wouldn't need to make it an order, Jethro. Or don't you trust what you taught me all these years?"

He glared at her.

"Or is it that you want revenge, Jethro?" Director Shepherd asked ruthlessly. "Are you going to stand there and tell me that you won't be affected if McGee dies? That the first suspect you come across you're not going to brutalize into an assault case against the department?"

Gibbs bristled. "You know me better than that, Jen."

Jenny nodded. "You're right, Jethro, I do and you know _me_. What would you do in my place?" She waited for an answer. When none was forthcoming, she let it go. "Right. I'll assume that the files are on your desk, Jethro. I'll have Cynthia get them to me, and I'll study them tonight. I'll talk to Ziva about her part in this; it sounds as though there's a lot more here than we expected when we got handed this assignment. In the meantime—Ducky," she broke off, greeting the older man. "Sit down," she ordered. "You look exhausted. Is there any news?"

Dr. Mallard allowed himself to be steered into the most comfortable and least stained seat in the hospital waiting room. "Precious little," he told them. "Timothy is critical, but every moment he's alive gives us all more hope. They were successful at removing the bullet from his lung, and the next few hours will tell the tale."

"And Mrs. Ansarad?" Director Shepherd wouldn't let them forget the other victim.

"More difficult to say, Director. Her wound would normally not be quite so serious, but her pregnancy is complicating matters. No one is yet ready to sacrifice the child; it remains a waiting game. Ali, naturally, is distraught," he added. "I just came from her bedside. She is a strong young woman, and there is hope."

"That's a relief," Director Shepherd said. "This is bad enough and will be worse if either one dies. There are already people in the State Department who are screaming that we have to make reparations. Ansarad's people are going to get whatever they ask for from our government after this."

"Always the politics of the thing," Ducky observed with a certain bitterness. "It is one thing to go after Ali; the man has made himself a target, knowing that that is the price to be paid for the good of his people. But the lady is an innocent bystander, and her child unborn. This is a travesty!"

"What?"

Ducky glared. "I said, it's a travesty, Jethro," he repeated somewhat testily. "That hoodlums should go after Ali, and she get caught in the crossfire—"

"There's something not right about this," Gibbs interrupted.

"If you can tell me what's right about a young woman and her unborn—"

"No, I mean the whole event." Gibbs wouldn't let the medical examiner finish.

"Jethro?" Director Shepherd, sensing blood, moved in.

"Who got hurt?" The question wasn't quite rhetorical. "Besides McGee, and there's another story there from Ziva. There were bullets flying everywhere in the hall," Gibbs said, "yet the only people who got hit were one Marine, Tony, and Mrs. Ansarad."

"You're right, Jethro." Understanding dawned for the medical examiner. "Those gunmen kept firing over everyone's head. I thought that they were aiming for Ali."

"Even that doesn't ring true," Gibbs said. "I didn't see everything, and we'll have to get DiNozzo's report, but what I remember was that Ansarad's bodyguard was standing there like a statue. It was DiNozzo that covered Ansarad. Why wasn't Chelid moving?"

"Are you saying that the bodyguard was in on it?" Jenny asked.

"Maybe, maybe not. That answer doesn't feel right," Gibbs said slowly. "All I know is that there's a lot more to this than meets the eye." He stared past the double doors to the intensive care unit, clearly torn between two very real needs.

Ducky could read him like a book. "Go, Jethro," he insisted. "I will remain here with Timothy; I shall keep you apprised of his condition as well as that of Mrs. Ansarad. Speak with Anthony, and with Ms. David. There is a mystery, and it behooves us to unravel it." He gestured to Jenny Shepherd. "Madame Director has generously offered to oversee the protection detail. Take her up on it, Special Agent Gibbs, and determine what it is that has caused this tragedy."

* * *

Ziva looked up as Gibbs entered the bullpen, guilt written heavy across her face. The all-but blank computer screen on her desk demonstrated how far she had gotten on her report. She was alone at the moment; both McGee's desk and DiNozzo's desk sat empty. She didn't quite cringe, but the intent was there. "Gibbs."

"Ziva." Gibbs circled around his own desk and seated himself in front of his computer. He didn't turn it on. He merely swiveled his chair around to face her. "You have something to say?"

"How is McGee?"

"Not good, Ziva. Not good."

Majorly unhappy. Not happy in the slightest. "I should have recognized the signs when McGee came in to work Monday morning," she confessed.

Gibbs acknowledged her statement. "A little more specific, Officer David?"

She tightened her lips. "Have you heard of the Scorpion's Flail?"

"I take it that this Scorpion's Flail doesn't have anything to do with the crawling insect variety."

"No, it does not." The Mossad officer sighed heavily. "It is a brain-washing technique. It is used when one wishes for a very specific outcome, and has very little time to gain control over the victim."

"You think this was used on McGee." It was not a question.

"I do." Ziva looked away angrily, then back at Gibbs. "Gibbs, I recognized the signs and told myself that I was mistaken. McGee was not involved in anything earth-twitching—"

"Earth-shattering." Tony entered and dropped into his own seat, arm in a sling. "The phrase is 'earth-shattering.'"

The correction would normally have engendered a mock argument. Not this time.

"The point is," Ziva told them, "that McGee had little to no strategic importance to anyone. The bruise on his wrist could have been from a momentary carelessness, even though McGee does not usually demonstrate such. His voice was hoarse. I wondered if it might be from screaming, however it could equally have been from either an exuberant party during the weekend or, as he said, from incipient laryngitis. Even his forgetfulness of his appointment with Ducky is within the realms of normal behavior. It _could_ have happened the way he said, yet he would have been primed—and apparently _was_—to give these sorts of responses. McGee was brainwashed," she finished up, "and I can prove it by seeing him and performing a simple test." She looked away, unhappy. "If I had acknowledged what I knew to be accurate, Gibbs, I could have prevented this entire fiasco. I should have known better. I let my complacency get the better of me."

Tony frowned. "The pieces don't add up."

"DiNozzo?"

Tony warmed to his topic. "The pieces don't add up," he repeated. "Assume that Ziva's right—"

"I am."

Tony ignored the interruption. "McGee comes in Monday morning with signs of the Scorpion thing. Boss, we don't get assigned to Ansarad's protection detail until Tuesday. How did they _know_?"

"Ansarad is friends with Ducky…" Ziva trailed off.

"But how did they _know_ that Ansarad would insist that Ducky be in charge of his security? He's a damn medical examiner, not an expert in security. Dig," Gibbs snarled. "Somebody _knew_ that we were going to be assigned this detail, and used us to set up Ansarad. Dig, and dig deep. DiNozzo."

"Boss?"

Gibbs eyed the man's sling with annoyance—and concern. "Track the communication in house. You're on medical leave; do your hunting from your desk. Find out everyone who knew anything about the trail of the request."

"On it."

"Ziva."

"Gibbs."

"Find out who wants Ansarad dead."

"That will be a large list," Ziva observed. "Afghanistan is a large country, with many factions."

Gibbs clarified his request. "Find out who would want Ansarad dead enough to go to all this effort to kill him."

"And you, Gibbs?"

Gibbs unfolded himself from his chair. "I have a medical examiner to interrogate."

* * *

Faces swam in and out of his field of vision, shouting at him, whispering, demanding that he perform actions that he was incapable of doing. A pinprick here, a stab of pain there, voices over his head speaking words that he could no longer comprehend but kept him on the edge of consciousness struggling to understand. It was suddenly very important that he listen, that they were discussing some poor slob in grave condition.

"He's fighting the tube."

"We can probably wean him off in another hour. How's the drainage?"

"Decreasing. We can maybe pull that tomorrow."

McGee tried to pay attention, but exhaustion overtook him. He tried to raise his hand to his face, tried to rub his eyes, and nothing happened.

_Someone put heavy weights on my wrists_, he reasoned in the last few moments of consciousness,_ or I'm tied up. Either way, I'm in trouble._

* * *

"Timothy. Timothy, wake up."

_Pain_. Sharp flare of agony. Fire arrowing through his side, causing his breath to catch. McGee tried to groan, to let out some of the hurt, only to find that his voice wouldn't work and that he had the mother of all sore throats.

"Don't try to talk, Timothy."

_I won't_. Easy promise to make. Someone whimpered in the background, and the only way McGee realized that the whimper came from himself was that it caused his throat to escalate from sore to fiery inferno. He tried to cry out, and nothing emerged from his tortured throat. Strong hands held him down.

"Timothy! Timothy! Listen to me, Timothy! We're trying to help you! Try to relax, try to rest!"

"Can't!..." McGee coughed, and the fiery inferno in his throat turned into a star going nova.

"He's getting agitated." A new voice, deeper than the first. "He's going to rip out his chest tube if he keeps this up. Hit him with a couple milligrams of morphine, see if that calms him down."

_Don't hit me. Please don't hit me. I hurt enough already_. Blackness washed over McGee, stealing his strength, stealing his ability to fight back. He tried to get up, but the hands kept pushing him down. And in the deepening haze of unconsciousness, a laughing hyena giggled hysterically at him.

* * *

"How is he?" Gibbs figured he'd asked the same question forty times over in the past twenty-four hours. Didn't matter; he'd keep on asking until he got the answer he wanted.

Dr. Mallard looked as tired as Gibbs had ever seen him, and a wave of guilt washed through Gibbs. The medical examiner should have retired years ago, and here Gibbs was, pushing him through events that would be beyond the strength of a far younger man. The needs of national security, Gibbs tried to tell himself, and knew it for a lie. This wasn't national security, this was personal. This was McGee, fighting for his life beyond those doors. This was DiNozzo, pecking with one hand at this computer, wincing with pain every time he took the other arm out of its sling to try to use it. This was Ziva David, thinking that she had let her team down by not recognizing the signs of some esoteric brainwashing technique from the dawn of time. And this was Dr. Donald Mallard, knowing that it was his relationship with Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad that had brought them to this point.

Damn right it was personal.

Ducky tried to be enthusiastic through his exhaustion. "Better. He's breathing on his own now, although he's still not ready to come off of the monitoring."

"He say anything?"

"Not yet. He won't be able to talk for some time, Jethro. The after-effects of the endotracheal tube—"

"He awake? He can write, can't he?"

"He's not coherent—"

"When _will_ he be coherent, Ducky?"

"These things take time, Jethro—"

"We haven't _got_ time, Ducky!" Gibbs cringed, realizing that his voice was rising with frustration. He glanced around irritably, grateful that there wasn't anyone else in the hospital waiting room, and calmed himself with an effort. "When can I talk to him?"

"I don't have a concrete answer, Jethro." Ducky wasn't going to be bullied. "I will notify you as soon as Timothy is able to withstand an interrogation."

It was the best that Gibbs was going to be able to squeeze out. He moved on to his next topic, one almost as close to his heart. "What about Ansarad?"

"If you want an answer to your question, Jethro, you'll need to be more specific. What do you wish to know?"

This time Gibbs had his questions ready. "How long have you known Ansarad?"

Ducky was ready. "Several decades. I did a tour of duty in his town when he was coming of age. I understand he took over as tribal chief shortly after I left, after his father passed away, and has developed the place rather well, considering all the challenges that he's faced."

"You've kept in touch with him?"

"Only peripherally. Communication with his village has been rather sketchy over the years, especially during the reign of the Taliban. Most of what I know I've gathered through various news articles. A year ago Ali found me through the Internet, and we've exchanged a few emails. I was delighted to hear that he was going to visit Washington, and asked if we might meet to catch up on events in person. I never expected it to turn out this way," Ducky added bitterly. "Had I known, I would have instructed him to cancel his visit."

"I'll need to see those emails, Ducky," Gibbs decided.

"I wish you luck. I deleted all but the last two or three several weeks ago," Ducky told him.

Gibbs screwed up his face in thought. "Maybe not." He tossed a look at the doors, behind which his computer geek lay in drugged repose. "McGee has been able to get stuff off of computers that we thought had been deleted. Maybe Abby can do something with yours."

"I shall get it to her immediately," Ducky promised. He indicated the doors. "Abby is with him at the moment. Do you want to join her, and see him?"

_Not like this. Not with his eyes closed. Not with blood soaking through white bandages, seeping onto his hospital gown. Not with his face clenched with pain_.

"Yeah."


	6. Wrists

_Laughing hyenas, laughing at him._

_Tied up. Rivers of fire flowing through his veins._

_He couldn't help himself; he begged them to stop._

_They wouldn't._

* * *

Abby looked up as Gibbs walked into the glassed-in cubicle that surrounded a junkyard's worth of hospital machinery. There were more beeps and dancing dots of light than Gibbs had ever seen in his life, but they seemed to comfort the lab rat. She sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair, her hand slipped into McGee's. Her eyes were rimmed red; Gibbs pretended not to notice.

"He wake up at all? Say anything?"

Abby bit her lip. "He woke up a couple of times, but I couldn't make anything out. Ducky says that his vocal chords won't work very well for another couple of days after taking the tube out of his throat."

"Yeah." _What else was there to say? That McGee was strong and healthy? That he would jump out of that narrow and utilitarian hospital bed with a joke worthy of DiNozzo?_

Not happening.

A tear appeared at the corner of Abby's eye, and she rubbed it away, trying to pretend that it never happened. "Gibbs, he's scared."

"Yeah, Abbs. I know. We all are."

"No, Gibbs. I mean, _really_ scared. I mean, sometimes he moans and shakes, like something's happening. Like, something not with hospital stuff."

"He's been through a lot, Abby."

"He'll get through this," Abby interrupted fiercely. "I mean, this is McGee! He's young, and he's strong, and he's healthy and all that stuff that everybody always says. He's not going to die, Gibbs!" She lost her battle with the tears; more flooded over. "Gibbs!" she wailed. "Gibbs!"

Gibbs pulled her into his arms, offering the only comfort he could. "He's not going to die, Abbs," he soothed, hoping to hell that he wasn't lying.

* * *

DiNozzo swiveled in his chair to face the man walking in. "Boss."

"DiNozzo. Give me some good news." _Because right now, I need it_.

"I've traced back the communication channels from Ansarad's people to ours. This visit was planned almost three months ago. Ansarad's people arranged his travel through Afghanistan to Kabul, and the Air Force gave him a lift to D.C. with a layover in Germany. There are a lot of ways that the information could have gotten to terrorist cells in this country, boss. There wasn't much secrecy to this trip. Ansarad's stated purpose in coming here is to obtain financial backing for the fledgling industries in his village. He wants them to grow, and set up an industrial center there. He figures that by making conventional life more attractive, he'll gain more strength against the outlying Taliban factions in the mountains beyond. So far, he's been right. His area is one of the more affluent in Afghanistan, outside of Kabul and places where our forces are strong. A bunch of people are flocking to his region."

"What about here, DiNozzo?"

Tony consulted his notes. "Chelid contacted one Royston Dickerly, of the State Department, about a week ago. Dickerly, as per protocol, asked the Secret Service to coordinate security arrangements. Then Chelid objected, said that the only person in America that Ansarad trusted was our own little Ducky. Dickerly gleefully handed it over to NCIS, and the rest is history, straight through Madame Director to Ducky to you."

"And Dickerly?"

"Checked him out. Career diplomat, mid-forties with a wife, two point four children, a dog, and a mini-van. His government pension is worth more than he is. No evidence that he came into any pay off monies, and his phone and computer records are clean. If he was contacted by any terrorist cell, then they've gotten a hell of a lot better at covering their tracks."

Gibbs frowned. No help there. "Ziva?"

The Mossad officer was ready. "Ali Abu Ansarad is a man who engenders strong emotions. His people love him, and work hard to support his vision of the future. He is well-respected by his fellows, and the leaders in Kabul look to him to stabilize the region. He is considered a force for good by Western nations. Anti-Western forces, naturally, would like to see him dead."

"Any leads there?"

"Only three that have the resources to carry out an assassination in this country," Ziva informed him. "All three are Taliban splinter groups, with bases to the north, east, and west of Ansarad's stronghold. The northern group is the least well-known. They recently suffered a loss in their leadership—an American drone, I believe—and are undergoing an internal struggle for leadership. Of the three, this is the one that I doubt is behind the plot. There is too much internal unrest.

"The western group is much stronger, supporting at least two known cells on the East Coast of America. One cell is in Florida, and the second is suspected to be in Ohio. Both have the potential to travel to Washington easily."

"Have the locals check 'em out," Gibbs told her. "They still in town or are they visiting Grandma here in D.C.?"

"I will follow up," Ziva promised, and moved on to her last bit of intel. "The eastern group is known as the Lions of the Desert. They are a clan that strictly adheres to the Taliban's interpretation of the Koran, and are angry that so many changes have taken place in Afghanistan. Of the three, they bear the most hatred toward Ansarad and would rejoice to see him dead. And, Gibbs, at least four of their members have disappeared."

"Disappeared? From Afghanistan? Where did they go?"

"No one knows," Ziva told him. "Knowing the territory, it is my guess that they traveled through the mountains into Pakistan and made their way here through devious routes. Alternately, they could have traveled north and crossed the border into Tajikistan or Uzbekistan and from there to Europe. They likely entered this country under assumed names."

Gibbs recalled the assault on the hotel where Ansarad had made his first speech. There were video cameras there, he knew, with digital tapes currently in the possession of NCIS. There had been some eight attackers, not that he'd seen their faces enough to remember them. "Check out the tapes, both of you," he ordered. "See if you can match any of 'em up with those four. We have pictures of those Lions of the Desert?"

"Three of them, but not the fourth," Ziva said. "Gibbs, the attackers at the hotel wore masks. It will be difficult to identify them with certainty."

"Then make your best guess, David," Gibbs growled. "We need a lead. Unless you've got a better idea?"

"I do." She stood up to the team leader.

"Then spit it out."

Ziva lifted her chin. "McGee was coerced into performing his action. It is not an easy thing to do; it takes drugs and knowledge of the way that a man's mind works."

"Go on."

"Two days isn't a long enough time to do the job," Tony objected. "It takes weeks."

"Not in this case. The action that they needed him to perform was simple and straightforward. In itself, the turning off of the power would not normally raise alarms in one's mind, which is part of the reason that they were able to make McGee obey. Had they attempted to coerce him into picking up a gun and putting a bullet through Ansarad, then you would be correct, Tony. That is a much more violent and repugnant act." Ziva was through lecturing. "Gibbs, I need to question McGee."

Tony snorted. "Good luck. In case you hadn't noticed, the man's unconscious."

Ziva nodded. "That will work in his favor. I do not need him conscious; in fact, it will be easier on him if he is not. He will react more strongly."

Gibbs settled himself. "Keep talking."

Ziva did. "There are variations on the Scorpion's Flail. If I can identify which variation was used, it will give us another clue as to who was involved."

Gibbs considered. "It won't hurt him?"

"Not if he's unconscious."

Gibbs set his jaw. "Go."

* * *

Ali Ansarad stumbled out of his wife's hospital room to lean heavily against the door frame.

Ducky came out of his chair in a flash, leading his friend to a chair. "Ali, she's doing better. You heard her doctors; she will recover and there is every reason to believe that the child will be born in the normal course of things. She's doing well, Ali."

Ali sat heavily. "Yes, she is, Donald; thanks be to Allah." It took a moment, and then the shuddering began, the holding back of tears from a man pushed too far. "This shouldn't have happened. It was me that they were after, Donald! Me! How did my little RoseMarie get in the way? My wife, my child! Ducky, how did I come to this?"

Ducky glanced around, his gaze falling on the two guards that Director Shepherd had assigned. "Give us a moment, gentlemen?" He waited until the pair had moved discreetly beyond the closed doors, then put his hand onto Ali's shoulder. "This isn't your fault, Ali. You know that. You have been a marked man since before your father died. Your enemies have known for decades that you are a force to be reckoned with, that you will bring peace and prosperity to your homeland. They don't want that, don't want to accede control to any but themselves."

"But, my RoseMarie—!" Ali wailed.

"Hush, my friend. Your wife was a lieutenant in the armed forces. She served honorably in your country; she knew very well what she was getting into. She must love you very much, Ali."

"Too much." Ansarad's shoulders began to shake anew. "Too much, Donald! I must find a way to protect her!"

"The world is not a safe place, Ali," Ducky reminded him. "The only way to make her safe, and to make a better world for your child, will be to stand up to those who want you dead."

* * *

Abby looked up as the trio—Gibbs, Ziva, and Ducky—entered the hospital room. McGee looked better, Gibbs noted. The man's color was better, and some kind nurse had removed the vestiges of adhesive left over from when the tube had been taped into the man's mouth to keep him alive. There were still too many wires and tubes and beeping things, but Gibbs knew the signs of improved health, and McGee was showing them. Gibbs felt cautiously hopeful.

Abby didn't remove her hand from McGee's. Gibbs wasn't at all certain that McGee knew the lab rat was present, but he was damn sure that it didn't matter to Abby. Sticking by the patient's side would only be interrupted if Gibbs himself needed her to explore some forensic evidence that would lead to the apprehension of the bastards who did this. Abby's mascara was smeared and she looked tired; that was okay. There were two cups of Caf-Pow on the side table, size large, one of which was empty and the other two-thirds empty, which explained how the woman was still awake after spending the night. Ducky had been unsuccessful at persuading her to go home to rest, Gibbs had been told, and he believed it.

"He looks better." Gibbs didn't give her the opportunity to disagree.

Abby wasn't going to argue. "Yeah. But he hasn't woken up, Gibbs. He's just lying there. The nurses give him more medications, and say he's getting better. More stable."

"Every hour that he is alive means another hour that healing has occurred, my dear," Ducky told her. "He will wake up when he's ready."

"In the meantime, go home, Abbs," Gibbs directed. "You've been here all night. Get some rest."

"Gibbs—"

"You can come back in the morning," Gibbs interrupted kindly. "Better, spend some time in the lab. Do your job, Abby, so that we can get Ansarad finished and back on his plane to Afghanistan. We'll make sure that McGee is okay."

"Okay." Abby's shoulders slumped tiredly. "You'll stay with him?"

"Abby—"

"Okay, okay! I'm going." Abby stood up, wobbling tiredly until the caffeine caught up with her. She turned to leave—then turned back suspiciously. "What are you going to do to him, Gibbs?"

"Abby—"

"Gibbs—"

Ziva broke in. "Go home, Abby. I will explain everything to you later."

Abby instantly got worried. "Ziva? What do you mean, 'explain everything later?' What are you going to do? He's innocent, isn't he? Do you think that he did something, and that's why Mrs. Ansarad got shot? Or maybe he didn't do something that he was supposed to? Gibbs?"

Telling her the truth wouldn't help. Gibbs took refuge in Ziva's line. "Go home, Abby. Get some rest. I'm going to need you in the lab, so that we can clear this whole thing up."

"You _are_ worried about McGee!" Abby exclaimed. "Why? What happened? Gibbs, who shot McGee? It was the attackers, right? But how did they get into the command center? That's where McGee was, right?"

Gibbs sighed heavily. "Go home, Abby."

Ducky slid into the discussion. "Abby, Jethro and Ziva have an idea that they need to investigate, something that will give us a great deal of insight into this matter, but they cannot do it with so many people around. Furthermore, Timothy is likely to need a great deal of care once he is discharged from the ward. I have Mother to care for and would not be best pleased to expose Timothy to her clutches during his convalescence. Anthony himself is recovering from his—as he puts it—his 'flesh wound'. That leaves Ms. David, Agent Gibbs, and yourself as caretakers. Who do you expect would be most qualified and of an adequate nature to take on the task when Timothy is discharged?"

"Hey," Ziva said faintly, clearly wondering if she had somehow been insulted in an erudite fashion.

"We'll discuss this later." Gibbs _knew_ his caretaker abilities had been dissed, and wasn't objecting in the slightest. Ducky was absolutely right. "Go."

In that tone of voice? Abby left, but not without a squeeze to the unconscious man's hand and a backward and scared look.

Ducky waited until all three were certain that the lab rat was gone before advancing to the hospital bed. "Abby's quite correct, Jethro. Agent McGee should have awoken before this. The offending medications have cleared the liver and should not be impacting his condition. He ought to be awake."

"Another indication that the Scorpion's Flail was used," Ziva observed coldly, pushing her emotions down into an unused wad somewhere deep inside. She advanced toward the bed. "The final test will be his response to my actions."

She started by gently caressing McGee's cheek. "McGee, wake up. McGee, can you hear me?"

Nothing. There was only the sound of the little green dot beeping high over their heads in a steady rhythm. Ziva could have been talking to a mannequin.

She tossed a look over her shoulder at the other two. _See? Just as I predicted_.

Then she got to work. Moving silently, she gently took hold of McGee's wrists and crossed them over his waist.

The effect was immediate. McGee stiffened, air hissing out of him. Muscles tightened, and the little green beeps nearly doubled in speed.

Both Gibbs and Ducky took notice. "Ziva?"

She wasn't done. Ziva took two fingers and pinched at McGee's chest, almost enough to leave a bruise.

McGee cried out, eyes widening in terror, the sound harsh and whispery from his bruised throat.

"Ziva!" Ducky moved to stop her.

The Israeli officer had already finished; she had obtained the information she needed. She released her victim, rearranging his wrists back at his side, and once again caressed McGee's cheek as if in an oblique apology. The sharp staccato of heart beats slowly returned to a more leisurely pace, and McGee himself became more relaxed—although 'limp' might be a better term, Gibbs thought grimly. The man once again looked wiped out.

Ziva turned to the other two. "I was correct; McGee has been subjected to the Scorpion's Flail. It would be difficult to determine the exact technique under the circumstances, but what I see is consistent with how the Lions of the Desert perform this maneuver. Given that four of the Lions have vanished from the Intelligence community's radar, I would think it likely that they are the culprits, Gibbs. We should put out an APB. I can obtain images from my people for us to aid in the search."

Gibbs pursed his lips. "The evidence is flimsy, Ziva. I believe you, but we need a little more to connect the dots. See what you can dig up."

"I will," Ziva started to promise when Ducky interrupted them.

"Gibbs." A quiet demand for attention.

Gibbs saw immediately what his medical examiner was referring to. White-faced and drawn, Special Agent Timothy McGee was awake. Not by much, and closer to dead than alive, but awake. Gibbs moved closer. "Welcome back, McGee."

"Boss—" McGee coughed, the sound harsh and painful to listen to. McGee tried again. "What happened?"

Gibbs took another tack. "What do you remember, McGee?"

McGee tried. He tried to remember and the trying wasn't easy, but it worked. "Was it—was it Ducky's friend?" Bewildered.

Gibbs nodded. "Ali Ansarad."

"We were—" Cough. Wince—"we were setting up security. The airport…" McGee frowned. "There was someone there. Ziva and Tony chased them off, didn't they?"

"Keep going, McGee." Gibbs wouldn't let him stop.

"I…" McGee was getting into trouble. It wasn't yet making sense. "We were supposed to cover Ansarad when he went to the Marquis Hotel downtown. He was giving a speech. Did we—?" He broke off, the memory pouring in, and his face went flat. "We did. _I_ did. I went several hours before everyone else, set up the command post in the observation and lighting booth above the hall." His hand started to shake, and the little beeps from the monitor overhead started a double time march. "I set it up, boss. I remember setting it up, remember having trouble with one of the circuits that was dead out of the box. I got it to work, didn't I, boss?" McGee turned his face toward Gibbs, the fear evident. "It didn't let us down? What happened, boss?"

"What else do you remember, McGee?" The question should have been accompanied by a head whack.

McGee winced reflexively, anticipating. "I…" He trailed off. "I—I don't remember, boss. I must have been in the control center. What happened?" he asked again, trying to keep his voice from shaking, and failing. "Did someone get into the command center? Is that what happened?"

"Not exactly," Gibbs started to say, when Ziva inserted herself.

"McGee," she said, "cross your wrists."

"What?" Another cough. Another wince. Flash of pain—and fear.

"Cross your wrists. Cross them as though someone had tied you up."

McGee's face went dead white. The monitor overhead screamed into overdrive. "No."

Ziva approached the bedside. "Cross your wrists," she commanded quietly.

The trembling became obvious. "No. Please…no."

"Ziva." Warningly. Gibbs watched the scene play out, ready to intervene.

Ziva seated herself on the edge of the hospital bed, not yet touching her fellow agent. "Why won't you do as I ask, Tim?" There was pity in her voice, and understanding.

McGee couldn't answer. He lay there, as white as the hospital linens beneath him, shaking. A drop of blood sprang to his lip; he'd bitten it.

Ziva pushed ahead. "You were taken, McGee. Someone—or more likely several someones—took you last Friday night. They kept you over the weekend, and then released you. You never knew that it happened. They brainwashed you, McGee. That's why you don't remember."

McGee moaned, a sound of fear more than pain. Overhead, the little beeps screeched out a warning.

"I can help you to remember, Tim," Ziva told him. "You _must_ remember. It is important."

McGee could only shake, trying to refuse her offer.

Ziva wouldn't let him. "You must remember," she repeated. "Cross your wrists, Tim. That will help you to rememb—"

"No! No, I don't want to!"

"You must," Ziva said inexorably, pity and sorrow mixed with determination. "Tim…" She placed a light fingertip onto one of her victim's wrists.

"No!" The scream was wrenched from his raw throat, and McGee nearly threw himself from the bed in an effort to escape.

"McGee!" Gibbs bolted forward to keep the man from falling to the floor. "Ziva!"

The Israeli agent had already stopped her unorthodox interrogation and was holding McGee down to keep him from ripping out the medical equipment that had saved his life. Ducky saw that the nurses, attracted by the commotion, had approached the door. "Get morphine," he ordered. "I need this man sedated as quickly as possible."

"No!" McGee seemed to come to himself, wilting in their grasp. "No, I'm okay. Just…let me alone…"

"McGee?" Gibbs wasn't certain of his man in the slightest.

"Morphine," Ducky insisted, watching the nurse slide the syringe into the intravenous tubing. "Timothy—"

"I remember," McGee said flatly. The memory broke through, inserting itself with surgical precision, though his voice took on the slurring quality that told of a narcotic blur. "I remember now… It was time… They made me…turn off…the…power." The little beeps overhead slowed to something approaching normal as the morphine shut him down. "Didn't…want…" His eyes closed.

Ducky couldn't help but slide his fingers to McGee's neck, feeling for the pulse, assessing the agent's condition. "He's under," he informed the others. "Ziva, that was quite remarkable—and distressing. What did you do?"

"It was the Scorpion's Flail," Ziva said grimly. "This is part of the technique. The victim's wrists are tied, and an extract made from certain plants is applied. In the past centuries, the victim would be forced to swallow the concoction. When I learned this technique, I was taught to use a purified solution that could be injected into a vein." She indicated the barely visible bruise on McGee's wrist, all but overtaken by the new needle marks from recent medical activities. "McGee was subjected to the newer drugs. I am certain of it. The victim knows that when his wrists are secured, he will be tortured until he performs the proper action. It is similar to a Pavlovian reaction; to make the torture stop, the victim must do the task that is required of him. He is tortured over and over, performing the same task each time until he learns to perform it properly in order to avoid the pain. The drug lowers his resistance and blurs his memory of the brainwashing. The only clues that this technique has been performed is any bruising left from the injection of the drug, and the victim frequently displays laryngitis from the screams. Otherwise, the victim behaves normally, and the hoarse voice is attributed to more unremarkable causes."

"So McGee was forced to turn off the power during the assault," Gibbs mused.

"I believe so. Obviously the Lions of the Desert obtained information on our team, Gibbs," Ziva said. She jerked her chin at the unconscious man on the hospital bed. "They targeted McGee as the most easily obtained and in the best position to subvert. If they had tried to take you or Tony, they would have needed to try to persuade you to kill Ali Ansarad directly and that would have been impossible in the two days that they had available to them. The action of firing a weapon at a man is so repugnant that their attempt with either of you would have failed. By forcing McGee to merely turn off the power to the command center, they would have thrown the hall into confusion. The terrorists would have been able to enter, kill the two Marines on guard, and kill Ansarad quickly before the remainder of the Marine squadron had been notified. They struck at our weakest point."

"A mission which you interrupted, my dear," Ducky observed, "when you stopped Agent McGee from turning off the power."

"Yes." Ziva's face darkened. "I should have realized it sooner. We could have set a trap, and captured the Lions, perhaps killed them as they attacked." She looked at the man lying in the bed, knowing that she had fired the bullet that had nearly ended his life. "We may still have that opportunity," she added quietly.


	7. Not Said

"Well, if this doesn't scream 'McGeek', I don't know what does." Tony DiNozzo scanned the living room to McGee's apartment. His arm sent up a flare of pain, reminding him that taking it out of the sling wasn't a good idea, and probably wouldn't be for the near future. He winced; he shouldn't even be doing this, searching McGee's apartment for signs of what had happened, but _dammit!_ This was family! McGee might make himself an easy target for DiNozzo's barbs, but that didn't mean that whoever did this to him was going to be allowed to get away with messing with the junior agent's head. That joy was reserved for DiNozzo himself.

The apartment was neat almost to a fault. Tony could probably eat food off of the sofa and not get sick. There weren't any dirty clothes tossed lazily onto the floor, no dirty dishes in the kitchen next door—even the blinds had been dusted. The closest thing to human, Tony decided, was the cascade of crumpled up papers overflowing the wastepaper basket beside the desk that boasted McGee's pride and joy of a typewriter. Typewriter? What a joke. _Nobody_ used a typewriter any more. Nobody, that was, except ol' Thinks-He-Can-Write McGee. Tony glanced over the papers lying neatly in a pile beside the typewriter, astounded that anyone could actually type without using up bottles and bottles of white stuff to cover up the mistakes. How did McGee do it?

The apartment did not look hopeful for the acquisition of clues, and his companion thought the same thing. "If the terrorist guys took McGee from here, then they were awfully neat," Abby observed. "Tony, we can look, but I don't think we'll find anything here. I vote we look in the apartment garage."

Privately, Tony thought that the Forensics specialist was right. "Gibbs said to check it out. So, we check it out. You want to tell the boss we thought he was wrong?"

Abby looked doubtful. "No…"

"So, we look, we poke and prod, we take a few samples of fingerprints, and we move on." Tony moved into the bedroom, noting that the covers were pristine, that they had been carefully smoothed into neatness just hours before their owner had been shot in the line of duty. Would McGee try to neaten those covers when he was home, convalescing? Tony shook his head, dismissing the image with a shudder.

"Tony! Over here!"

"What'cha got, Abby?"

"In here. In the trash." Abby had donned gloves, and was sifting through the small amount of detritus that had been allowed to accumulate in the waste receptacle of McGee's kitchen. "Look." She held up a coffee tin with a bright yellow label saying, _Aroma!_

"Right. A coffee tin. Abby, McGee drinks coffee, just like the rest of us."

"But not this brand," Abby told him triumphantly. "Tony, this is proof that someone was here in this apartment. And, look at this." She held up a crumbled piece of red and brown waxed paper, something that recently surrounded a piece of greasy, over-cooked refuse masquerading as food. "This is a wrapper from a McRonald's hamburger. Tony, McGee doesn't eat this stuff."

Tony got interested in spite of himself. "You sure? I mean, he might eat food like this when you're not around—"

Abby _looked_ at him. "This is McGee, Tony."

DiNozzo shrugged, remembering too late to let one shoulder not participate in the shrug. "Ouch. I stand corrected. You think you can pull a print off of it?"

"I don't know, Tony. It's pretty crumbled. Anything I get will have a lot of errors in it. I can try," she added doubtfully.

DiNozzo nodded; best they could do. He adjusted the sling irritably around his neck; he never realized that his arm could be so heavy. "Let's hit the garage, look over McGee's car. Maybe we'll get lucky."

* * *

"You sure about that, Jen?" Gibbs kept his voice down.

Director Shepherd sniffed. "You know better than that, Jethro. All I can tell you is that there was a sighting of two of the Lions of the Desert in France just yesterday, unconfirmed. It might have been them, or it might not have. Take your pick."

"Just two of them," Gibbs mused. "Where are the other two?"

"Causing mischief somewhere, I have no doubt," Jenny returned tartly. "The question is: where?" She scanned the room, looking for potential trouble and making certain that the people she'd stationed around the perimeter were where she wanted them. They were in the mosque for the second gathering by Ansarad, and were doing their best to keep their presence unobtrusive. It wasn't working well; there were many glares from the people attending services and formal complaints had already been lodged. Frankly, Director Jenny Shepherd didn't care. If the mosque wanted to host a reception for a visiting Afghani dignitary, then it would have to put up with the inevitable security arrangements. "Why couldn't Ansarad postpone this talk? In fact, why couldn't he bag the rest of the trip and head back home to someplace safe, like Afghanistan?" The sarcasm flowed; a sure sign that the NCIS director was nervous. "Is Ziva here?"

"Ansarad is still objecting to her presence." This tiff between Afghanistan and Israel wasn't helping. Gibbs wished that world politics would hurry up and get their act together. It was cramping his style. "I've got her working on McGee."

Jenny's face stiffened. "How is he?"

Gibbs was equally as cool. This was not the place for demonstrations of concern. "Better. Ziva's worried, though; says that most practitioners of this Scorpion's Flail thing tend to put in suicide clauses for their victims. She thinks that McGee was programmed to kill himself after pulling the switch on the power, just to keep the evidence from leaking out."

"Are we going to be able to trust him, after this? I can't have a field agent that I can't trust, Jethro. Not even McGee."

"Let it play out, Jen." Gibbs too scanned the audience, automatically categorizing each member for a threat level. There was an unobtrusive squad of Marines out front, too, dressed in formals to look like an honor guard but with real bullets in their ceremonial side arms and something a little more lethal within their grasp should something unpleasant come their way. "McGee's tougher than he looks."

"I hope you're right, Jethro." She sighed. "You generally are, dammit." Someone in Western garb with a flowing head wrap crossed her line of vision, and she caught sight of someone else that she knew. "Ducky looks good. He's been invaluable, running interference between Ansarad and the rest of us. Ansarad didn't want the Marines here, either, but Ducky told him that he'd either put up with the security arrangements that we had or he'd refuse to take responsibility for the outcome. Then that bodyguard, Chelid, he started arguing with Ansarad, too. Only the wife didn't say anything, not that I expected her to."

"Wife Number One," Gibbs rumbled idly.

Jenny Shepherd nodded. "Not happy, that one. With Number Two in the hospital, she's probably expecting her name to pop up on someone's radar—"

"Hey, who's that?" Gibbs interrupted.

Director Shepherd went on alert. "Which one?"

"There. Tall guy, blue turban. Long beard, neatly trimmed. Looks like one of the Lions."

"I see him." Jenny spoke into her comm. "Mickey, three o'clock, tall guy in the blue turban. Acquire his picture and run it fast."

"Acquiring. Got it." Gibbs could hear the background noise through Jenny's comm. link. The Director had set up a command post in one of the ante-rooms with a secure link to national security computers for exactly this sort of operation. Gibbs spared a moment to admire her skill; sure, he'd taught her a lot during their days in the field, but Jenny Shepherd wasn't satisfied to simply learn field work. This was a woman who'd studied her profession and was as capable as anyone in the business—and that included one Leroy Jethro Gibbs. "Subject has a Uzbekistan passport, arrived in New York two days ago. Name on the passport: Lashkar Sharif, identified as an importer of goods from the Middle East."

"Run a match against the four Lions," Jenny ordered.

"Running. Match. Subject identified as Omar Kardez, of Afghanistan."

Director Shepherd keyed her comm.. "Take him outside. Quietly," she added. "We don't want to cause a fuss."

"Neither does he," Gibbs remarked. "He won't want to finger the rest of his little band. We need to be on the alert, Jen."

"And we are," Jenny said, watching two agents approach and tap the blue turbaned man on the shoulder. Both watchers could see the emotions play across the face of the target: the freeze of denial that his cover had been pierced, the polite look of 'what is this about?'. Then the swift jerk of the eyes straight forward, to avoid giving away the location and identity of any co-terrorists, followed by the clear thought that a commotion would halt the event and prevent any further attempts on Ansarad's life.

Jenny followed Gibbs's thoughts. "How many more are here?"

"Good question." Gibbs continued to scan the crowd. There were some one hundred men here—only two women, both dressed Western style with their hair down. One was even blonde—and all of them were sipping at coffee. No alcoholic beverages, Gibbs noted. Those would undoubtedly come later, after the event was over and the men were on their way home with no one to comment on their behavior. "I guess this lets out the sighting of the Lions in France."

"That was only two of them," Jenny reminded him. "This is number three. You see number four anywhere in the crowd?"

"Not yet." Gibbs kept looking. "I want the interrogation, Jen."

"You realize that you're on stand-down? That you shouldn't even be here, Jethro?"

"But I am," Gibbs pointed out.

"Only because Ducky is here." Director Shepherd sighed. "You won't kill him?"

"Have I ever killed a suspect in my custody?"

"Let's leave that question unanswered, shall we?" Jenny replied tartly. She looked over the crowd, searching for anyone who fit the parameters of the fourth Lion of the Desert. "Maybe that one? Mickey, run his picture."

"Running. Nope. Wrong ears. Sorry, director."

"Don't be sorry, Mickey. Just be right. We've already had an incident; let's not compound it with any more problems." She glanced at Gibbs and returned to her previous line of thought. "Speaking of problems, talk to me more about McGee. Ducky says he's getting stronger."

"They're getting some of those damn hoses out of him." Gibbs continued to scan the crowd. "Ducky thinks it'll be a while before they let him out of the hospital. Ziva's bullet did a lot of damage. It was close-range."

"She saved a lot of lives," Jenny reminded him. "Cutting the power would have stopped the system from calling for back up. A lot of innocent people are living because of her actions."

"Not saying that she didn't. That what your report on her going to say, Jen?"

"It is. You think McGee will have a problem with that?"

"I think he'd like to award her a medal of honor. He's struggling."

"Am I going to have to retire him from the field, Jethro? Make him sit behind a desk for the rest of his career?" Director Shepherd pursed her lips. "I can't have someone out in the field with that hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles, Jethro. It would be dangerous to rely on him. I'd rather not have to make the hard decision, but we can't afford—"

"McGee's stronger than he looks, Jen. Give the man time. That's what I recommended five minutes ago, and that's what I'm repeating to you now."

"I just hope we have the time to give him," she replied, almost under her breath.

"Jen?"

"Politics, Jethro. An Afghani leader was shot at, on American soil under American protection. His wife and unborn child injured, possibly dying in our care. An American agent was suborned into participating in the affair, and was shot by an Israeli Mossad officer. If you can think of a more convoluted story to hand to the press, I don't want to hear it."

Gibbs was forced to agree. "Nobody's died yet, Jen."

"And that's our only saving grace. Let's see if we can keep that record going for a little longer, shall we?" Jenny Shepherd kept her eyes on the crowd. "Hey—that one. Over by the door. Look familiar?" Without waiting for Gibbs's response, she tabbed her comm. link. "Mickey, the man who just walked in. Business suit, blue tie, blue checked turban. Match?"

"Target acquired. Running the check: no match."

Director Shepherd turned to her subordinate. "Well, it looks like you have only one suspect to interrogate, Gibbs."

* * *

Ducky settled himself on the leather seat of the armored limo, across from where Ali Ansarad already sat. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Nadya Ansarad, wife number one, being escorted into another limo, this one staffed by female Marines and NCIS officers, all watching for any signs of danger. Gibbs and Director Shepherd, he knew, were waiting until all was secure before getting into the lead car, the one that would blaze the way back to the hotel where Ansarad was staying. "Your talk went over beautifully, Ali. I think you impressed your audience and the leaders of the community."

Ansarad nodded wearily. "I agree, my friend. With Allah smiling, several of those present will be willing to invest. I can create an industrial center in my village. I, or my heirs," he added darkly. "I am already grooming one son to run the center, and the next one not far behind. My other sons are still completing their schooling, is this country and in England."

"Have faith in Agent Gibbs," Ducky reproved mildly. "No one has died yet, and I understand that your wife is doing better."

"Yes, she is." Ansarad brightened. "Do you think we could visit her at the hospital again?"

"It is late," Ducky reminded him. "She is undoubtedly asleep at the moment, and it's the best thing for her and the baby."

Ansarad grew pensive yet again. "My world is difficult for an American-born woman," he mused. "Sometimes I wonder if I should have given up my quest. It would have been better for her."

"Would it?" Ducky wouldn't let him put it down. "From what I've seen of your wife, Ali, she is someone to be reckoned with. She conducted herself well while serving in your country in the military, and held her own. She has been a worthy companion."

"She is." Ansarad suddenly brightened. "Did I ever tell you the story of how she single-handedly conquered the village elders? They refused to educate the daughters of the village, so my RoseMarie set up a school in my own house and taught the daughters herself." He laughed. "As if that weren't bad enough, Donald, the daughters then far outshone the sons in the traditional village school in their learning! I have sponsored three daughters of the village to your Western schools, and only one of the village sons. The sons and their fathers have not liked that, let me tell you!"

"A remarkable woman," Ducky agreed. "Your own daughters, Ali, did they enjoy the schooling?"

A rueful look. "Nadya was far less easy to convince than the village elders. One of my daughters, Natira, studies with RoseMarie, but the others follow their own mother in the ways of our ancestors. Natira was the daughter of my first wife, Zuhaila," he added. "She was already a woman when RoseMarie came to me, but still takes pride in learning as the children do."

Ducky nodded. "Change takes time, and not all embrace it. Your lady wife will persevere."

Ansarad darkened. "Yes, and they will kill her for it. She is not universally loved, Donald. I do not permit her to leave my home without guards, for fear that someone will murder her. And now, with her carrying my child…" He trailed off, thinking.

"She is safe for the moment," Ducky reminded him. "She is well-guarded, and this is a country where murders do not occur quite so easily."

"Yes." It was a sound only. The man was deep in thought, Ducky realized, not hearing anything further.

They rode in companionable silence, each set of eyes following the lights that sparkled alongside the roads that led back to the hotel where Ansarad was in residence, another limo following that carried Ansarad's first wife and two more sedans at either end of the caravan armed with guards ready to defend the visiting dignitaries. The limos pulled up to the front of the Marquis Hotel, and the guards piled out, searching the area for any sign of the enemy before allowing either Ansarad or Ducky to emerge from safety.

"Good night, Donald."

"Good night, Ali. One more talk, this one with Congressional members if my memory serves me, and your duties will have been completed." Ducky turned to get back into the limo for his own trip home.

"Donald…"

"Yes, Ali?"

Ansarad had trouble with the words. "Donald…if something should happen to me, tell my RoseMarie to remain in this country with my son. Tell her it is my wish."

"Ali, is there something I should know?"

"No. No," and Ansarad shook his head. He looked away, then back and forced a smile. "It is only…What is the English cliché? Someone has walked over my grave." Another smile, and this one was more genuine. "Good night, Donald. You are a good friend."

"Good night, Ali," Ducky replied, watching the man allow himself to be escorted into the hotel. He cocked his head, wondering what it was that Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad had not said.


	8. Determination

Rock and a hard place.

He hurt. He hurt all over, but most of all, Tim McGee hurt when he breathed. His throat hurt from when they'd stuffed a tube down him to keep him breathing. His side hurt from when they'd stuffed a tube straight through his ribs to open up his lung from where it collapsed under the onslaught of Ziva's bullet. His stomach hurt from too many days of 'food' getting dripped in through another hole in his vein made by some very sympathetic nurses instead of eating something guaranteed to make him heave his guts and half his blood along with it.

He was really tired of the scenery. It was white and chrome and plastic, not an honest color around unless he wanted to count the red that seeped through his bandages and turned rusty brown as it dried. The bed was white. The machines were chrome. All of the little IV bags were plastic, with plastic tubes that dripped stuff into him and carried other stuff away. The ceiling and walls were close enough to white to make no difference, except for the spray of something green that traced a jagged line across three of the ceiling tiles. McGee didn't know what that green was and he suspected that he really didn't want to know.

And he still hurt.

There was something he could do about it. He could push the little button on the whirring chrome machine beside his bed that controlled a miniscule plastic bag of narcotic joy juice. Every tap of the button delivered a drop or two of something that did a really fine job of making the hurt go away for a few hours. He could do that as often as he liked.

There was only one problem: that same little drop of joy juice also started the dreams. Dreams of laughing hyenas, of crossed wrists, of indescribable agony licking across his chest—all that lay in wait for Special Agent Timothy McGee with every push of the button to take away the pain.

McGee would rather hurt.

This can't go on, he told himself. He couldn't continue to allow himself to be frightened by a few memories, horrific though they were. He needed to face them, regain control over himself. How could he expect Gibbs to trust him, if he couldn't trust himself? If he couldn't trust his own reactions?

There was more. There were answers in his memories, information that his team needed to protect Ducky's friend. Gibbs and Ducky and Tony and Ziva all needed him to face his fear, to remember what had been done to him, so that they could protect the man that they had been assigned to.

All of which meant that one Special Agent Timothy McGee needed to live up to his expectations of himself and deliberately invite the dreams back into his life. Ziva had shown him the way: cross his wrists. That was the key, that was the technique that his tormentors had used. Every time they crossed his wrists, every time they tied his wrists in front of him, he knew that they were going to torture him until he performed one simple action: turn off the power. He had been programmed as thoroughly as his computer, with as little ability to self-determination as the machine.

Well, McGee wasn't a machine, and he wasn't about to let himself be ruled either by dreams or by terrorists. McGee was going to expose himself to his memories and dredge up the information so that Gibbs and the others could go forth and apprehend the criminals before they could do any further damage.

Well…maybe not right now.

_This is silly_, McGee told himself. _They can't really hurt me. They aren't here. They're just dreams. I can simply lift my arm—damn, when did my arm get so heavy?—I can just lift my arm, push the little button, make the pain go away…_

_Who am I kidding? I'm finished. I'm finished as a field agent. They're never going to trust me in the field, not to cover someone's back. Poor little Tim McGee, never the same after those Afghani terrorists got to him. Not fit for duty. Can't handle the pressure any more. Cries himself to sleep at night._

_Crap!_

McGee stared at his finger, poised over the button that he had just stabbed, watching a single drop of clear liquid in its plastic chamber grow in size and finally fall to join the tiny pool below. It contained the narcotic joy juice. Small molecules of the substance would ease their way down the long line of plastic intravenous tubing and into his blood stream, altering his consciousness and taking away the pain that stabbed through him with every breath. Then the dreams would begin.

McGee watched in horror as his own traitorous hand fell back from where it had initiated the chain of events, to lay upon his waist in a clear invitation to himself: _face your fears_. There was only one more action to be taken to complete the trigger event, and that was to place his other wrist across the first in a grim parody of tying them together. All he had to do was lift his other arm and let it drop over the first. It wasn't a big action. There wasn't much to it. McGee could already feel the beginnings of the narcotic relief steal into his vein, a tiny little irritant that promised surcease from the constant sawing of air moving in and out. He could do this. He could face his fears with all the courage of Leroy Jethro Gibbs…

No, he couldn't. There was a reason that Timothy McGee was a writer; in a novel the hero could suffer untold agonies and be healed in the next chapter as if nothing had ever happened. A few keystrokes on a computer turned a broken leg into a distant memory, physical therapy not included or even required. No, McGee was going to try to keep the laughing hyenas at bay, not give in to the narcotic dreams until the medication was completely out of his body. He would never touch the machine containing the pain relief again, would fib and tell them that he had no more pain, that he didn't need it, that he was tougher than the pain, until they rolled the machine out of the room and he would never have to face the laughing hyenas again—

His second wrist touched the first. McGee watched in horror as the bruise on the skin of his left made contact with the bruise on the skin of the right…

The dreams began.

_It was a pack of laughing hyenas, some with heads raised to the moon and others with their muzzles dug deep into their prey, but they were all laughing. McGee watched in horror as the hyena-man approached him. The man caressed McGee's cheek, his fingers lingering along the jaw. "Turn it off," the hyena-man whispered, and turned the switch._

_Flame arced through him, twisting him helplessly, thrashing, trying to kick while his ankles too were bound, only the switch in front of him waiting to be triggered to stop the pain. McGee couldn't help it; he reached for the toggle and extinguished the fire._

_Again. And again._

_Over and over, each of the hyena-men set him aflame, the agony unbearable until he could switch it off with bound hands. Faster and faster they attacked, sometimes hyenas and sometimes men, fluidly shifting between the two, and he would find himself reaching to turn it off even before they turned it on._

_They laughed._

_The hyenas laughed._

* * *

Director Shepherd observed Gibbs through the one way glass. "He hasn't lost his touch."

DiNozzo agreed. "Probably never will."

The pair watched Gibbs circle around the table and seat himself in front of the man identified as Omar Kardez. Their voices came through the speakers clearly.

"My name is not Omar Kardez. I am Lashkar Sharif, of Kabul."

"Not what your prints say, Kardez."

"You have made a terrible mistake. I am not this Kardez person that you speak of. I am Sharif. I live and work in Kabul, with my family. We own an import business. We import fine rugs."

"Oh, I have no doubt that your cover will hold up," Gibbs told him, "that is, until we take a good look at it. What were you doing at Ansarad's speech?"

"I told you: I am a businessman; my family is in Kabul. We import fine rugs—"

"Only people with businesses based in this country were supposed to be at that talk. What were you doing there?"

"I do business in this country—"

"But you're not based here. Let's not rehash old material," Gibbs interrupted. "What's this?" He tossed what looked like an expensive pen onto the table.

"That's not mine—"

"We found it in your pocket."

"I don't carry that kind of pen; I am a poor merchant. I have little money—"

"We found it in your pocket," Gibbs repeated. "Pretty expensive pen for a guy who claims to have little money."

"It is a pen. People drop them, pick them up—"

"You picked it up?"

"If you found it in my pocket, I must have." Kardez wouldn't give in. His eyes were down, focused on the pen, refusing to meet Gibbs's stare. "What is the fuss over a simple pen?"

"What, indeed?" Gibbs picked up the silver object, rolling it in his fingers. "Or is it just a _simple_ pen?"

"You are making fun of me," Kardez accused. He tried to bluster. "This is America. I have rights. You must allow me to summon a lawyer."

"Sure. Go ahead." Gibbs continued to inspect the pen. "You got one in mind? We'll be sure to check him out, too."

"I am a poor businessman. All my money is tied up in inventory. I have no money to pay a lawyer. You must provide one; it is your law."

"Sure is." Gibbs clicked the pen open, then closed, then open again. "Got a bunch of telephone numbers on a list for lawyers. You'll need to jot the number down. I wonder if this pen writes? I wonder if this thing will write on your palm?" He smiled at Kardez, and it wasn't good to see. "I write things on my hand, if I run out of paper. I'll bet that you do the same thing, don't you?"

"I don't write on my hand." Both Jenny and DiNozzo noted the bead of sweat that appeared on Kardez's forehead.

Gibbs toyed with him. "Oh, go ahead. Here's the number to the next free lawyer on the list. They do this stuff _pro bono_, most of 'em. They don't charge you anything if you can't afford it." He rattled off a local telephone number. "Go ahead. Write it on your hand. I'll repeat the number, if you like, so that you get it right."

"I—" Kardez stopped talking.

"Problem, Kardez?"

All three—Gibbs, DiNozzo, and Director Shepherd—saw it happen. Kardez came to a decision, and his face smoothed out. "No. No problem. Give me the pen. Repeat the number, please." Kardez's speech became much more fluent and determined, and he took the pen from Gibbs and wrote the number on his hand. He wrote it hard and large, using plenty of ink.

Then he stopped, puzzled. His face darkened, fury lurking behind cold eyes. "This is not my pen."

"You're right," Gibbs told him. "It's not." He held up an identical pen, bagged and tagged for Forensic processing. "This is. Complete with some very interesting formulations for the ink." Gibbs's smile held triumphant. "You're not going to be killing anyone today with this thing, Kardez; not even yourself. Probably not ever."

* * *

"McGee!" Ziva rushed into the hospital room.

Her teammate whimpered, back arched in remembered pain, wrists held helplessly across his belly as though the ropes were there once more. His eyes were closed, but Ziva had no doubt that he was seeing things that no man ought to see. The monitor overhead was beeping hysterically, trying to keep up. McGee cried out, unable to keep it inside.

Ziva instantly knew what was happening. She dashed to McGee's side, pulling his wrists apart. "McGee! McGee, stop it!"

The effect was instantaneous. The moment his wrists no longer touched, McGee was no longer in pain. He slumped, melting onto the hard plastic of the hospital bed mattress, drenched in sweat, panting with remembered agony. He shuddered, and didn't open his eyes. "Ziva?" Small voice; whipped.

"I'm here, McGee," she soothed, touching him gently on the forehead, trying to smooth away the pain along with the lines. "I'm here. You're safe."

"I…" he let his voice trail away.

"It's all right, McGee," Ziva told him, still appalled at what her fellow agent had done. McGee had deliberately exposed himself to those memories? Ziva knew hardened spies who wouldn't have had the courage. She stroked his cheek, watching the tension seep away.

McGee opened his eyes, and there was still narcotic widening of the pupils. "Ziva…"

"It's all right," she repeated. "You're safe."

"Mm." He closed his eyes, openly shaking. "Safe."

"Safe," Ziva echoed, trying to emphasize the concept. "No one can get to you." She _hated_ seeing the lines in his face. If only she'd recognized the signs sooner!

McGee muttered something, the words indistinct.

"What?"

McGee tried again. "Hyenas."

"Hyenas." Ziva knew better than to say anything more. Not yet. Not yet. Just let the man hear what he'd said.

"Hyenas." McGee opened his eyes once again, searching her face. "They were hyenas."

It made sense. Several tribesmen associated themselves with animals that they admired, used them much as American Indians did their totems. This was a foul perversion of that custom, but effective. It helped to confuse and then control the victim.

Time to gently push. "They hurt you."

McGee shuddered. "Yeah."

He didn't seem to want to say anything more. Ziva tried again. "Did you see them?"

A spark of dull anger floated into both dilated pupils. "Yeah." Fury warred with terror, both submitting to exhaustion.

But McGee tried. "There were several of them." His words were slurred and difficult to understand through the pain-killers and the swollen lips. "Maybe four. The tall one was always in my face."

"Could you recognize him again, if you saw him?"

Cough. "Yeah." Shudder. Little green ECG beeps, speeding up in response then slowing when Ziva refused to let her impatience control her. She let McGee set the pace, waiting until he seemed able to talk yet again.

"Can you tell me what he looks like?"

"Tall. Six foot, maybe." Cough. "Black hair, black eyes." Another cough. "Black soul." McGee sighed, a long and drawn out breath laced with pain that no narcotic could touch. "Get me a laptop, Ziva, with a facial recognition program. I'll build you a picture of the guy."


	9. Loose Ends

Gibbs set a large cup of Caf-Pow onto a spare and bare spot on the lab bench. "You got something, Abby?"

"I do." The Forensics Specialist was in full swing. "Gibbs, I've been running all of the bullets that were found at Ansarad's first talk, the one that ended in disaster." She carefully avoided that topic; that way lay tears, and tears would interfere with helping McGee get revenge on his kidnappers by bringing them to justice. Abby kept herself under control. "A lot of the bullets I can attribute to the guns used by us and the Marines. That's the easy part."

"Keep going."

"Now we come to the bullets that I can't identify. Some I did: a lot of .223s, probably fired from a bunch of AR-15s. The rifling looks about right. If I get the weapon, I'll be able to match them with ninety-nine percent certainty, but there are still too many variables to say for certain quite yet."

"So the weapons were purchased in this country," Gibbs mused. "Makes sense; no one wants to try to smuggle in a weapon. I'll have DiNozzo see what AR-15s were sold in the surrounding area, as well as the Florida and Ohio places where those other two cells are known to be. You got more, Abbs?"

"Don't I always?" Abby turned to the keyboard and told another screen shot to pop up. "We only have one of these type bullets, Gibbs," she said when the picture of another bullet flashed into being. It wasn't difficult to tell that it was an entirely different caliber. "A .308," she confirmed. "Probably from a Remington. Maybe a Winchester, but Winchester's don't generally handle that caliber."

"A sniper special." Gibbs frowned; that put an entirely different light on things. "This was a frontal assault. A sniper gun would be worse than useless. Who was carrying one?" Gibbs wasn't about to say that he'd seen everything during that disastrous night, but a sniper gun would have stood out like a sore thumb.

"There's more." Abby turned to face him. "Gibbs, that's the bullet that they dug out of RoseMarie Ansarad. I'm working on the logistics, but it probably came through the far west window, from the building across the street."

That rocked Gibbs back. His lab rat was entirely correct: that did put a new spin on things. They'd assumed that the assault was to take out Ansarad. What if it was aimed for his wife?

Why? Why would anyone want to kill the former Lt. RoseMarie Lundquist? Frankly, it would make a lot more sense for someone to try to kill her in Afghanistan. People died every day in Afghanistan for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Ansarad himself had told Ducky that he feared for her life back home. Why would they wait until she was here in America?

That would be the next search that he'd assign DiNozzo: researching Lt. RoseMarie Lundquist Ansarad. Gibbs pulled out his cell so that he could notify his agent on medical leave about his next task when the small electronic annoyance beeped at him, announcing an inbound call.

Gibbs took it. "Gibbs."

"Gibbs, I'm with McGee. He is beginning to remember things. He wants the facial recognition program."

Finally! A breakthrough! With a picture of the suspect, they could send out an APB for the man. With even more luck, McGee would identify Kardez or his accomplice that they'd picked up at Ansarad's second talk as one of his kidnappers. "I'll bring it over," he told Ziva, "along with some mug shots of someone we just picked up. I'll fill you in."

* * *

Ducky met them both downstairs in the hospital lobby. Gibbs carried a small black bag with the laptop in it, ready to fire it up for McGee to work his magic. Ziva sipped at a tall glass of caffeine, blatantly ignoring the glares of the information desk clerk and the little sign that prohibited the consumption of edibles in the lobby.

"I checked in on Timothy, right after you left him, my dear," Ducky informed them. "The boy is still exhausted, and is sleeping at the moment. Best thing for him; there's no rush for us to get to his room."

"There is, Ducky," Gibbs reminded them. "There's one more speech for Ansarad to give, and this one will be with a bunch of congressmen. We need to find the people gunning for him before he goes to give that speech. I can just imagine the uproar if a few congressmen collect a few bullets along with our guest. I don't suppose you've had any luck in persuading him to back out of that one?" More hope than expectation.

"I'm afraid not, Jethro. Ali is quite determined to wrench all the support he can. He's with his wife at the moment," Ducky added, clarifying, "wife number two. Director Shepherd is upstairs as well, directing his bodyguards." Ducky sighed heavily. "To say that this is a mess would be an understatement. I almost wish that Ali had chosen not to come to this country, though from what he says it was quite imperative that he do so. There are several important figures back home to be swayed as much as any here, and this trip will do much to secure their cooperation if Ali can bring home promises of substantial foreign investments." Ducky uttered a short laugh. "Ali even joked that his influence on his countrymen would be further enhanced should he manage to get himself killed on this excursion. Popular support would fall to his eldest son who shares Ali's views as to how best to enable his village and his country to prosper. I assured him that his assassination would not happen, though I fear my assurances rang rather flat after the events of the past few days."

Gibbs grunted. "All the more reason to get McGee to identify his kidnappers and get 'em out of circulation. I brought pictures of the one that we apprehended at the second talk." He pulled out a manila folder, the 8 x 10 glossies trying to escape their confinement, and showed them to the medical examiner.

Ducky squinted at one of the pictures. "This fellow looks vaguely familiar. One of the chaps from the second speech, you say?"

"You know him from somewhere? He's not old enough to be of your generation, or of Ansarad's," Gibbs said. "He's closer to the bodyguard, what's 'is name? Chelid?"

"Yes," Ducky mused, stroking his chin. "Yes, that rings a bell—of course! He was still a youngster when I met him, one of the village lads. He would play with little Ifti, Iftihar Chelid," he mused. "Those two were wild about football, and I, as the senior present, would act as the referee. Omar was quite good, Jethro, quite talented at moving the ball along a field that not only had opposing players to avoid but a number of rocks and hillocks. I suspect that Omar might have gone on to national prominence in Afghanistan sports arena had the political scene been otherwise."

"Such is the case in much of the Middle East," Ziva observed. "Should the politics calm, I believe that the Israeli football team—soccer, to you Americans—would sweep all the major tournaments of the world."

Gibbs grunted, ignoring her opinion. "You think that Kardez would remember you, Ducky?"

"Quite possibly, Jethro. You wish me to interview him?"

"We'll see. We'll see," Gibbs repeated under his breath, leading them to the elevator and pressing the button to summon it.

The elevator dumped them out onto the fourth floor, and the trio could see the Marines standing outside of McGee's room, chatting with one of the techs walking by. The conversation stopped in a hurry when they spotted Gibbs and his team making their way toward them.

"Johnny, Roy," Gibbs greeted them. "Everything quiet?"

"Sure is, Gunny," the first nodded back. "Only nurses going in and out. Nothing to report, sir. Oh, and Director Shepherd stopped by, asked that you check in with her when you get the chance, sir."

"Will do, Roy. Thanks for the message." Gibbs pulled out his cell, ignoring the request to keep cell phones turned off, and hit the buttons to connect him with his boss. "Jen?"

"Not now, Jethro," she told him tersely. "Wife number one wandered off—oh, you found her? Where the hell was she? Never mind," clearly not talking to Gibbs, "just get her back where we can keep an eye on her. Lose her again, Kingsley, and you'll spend the next three months as assistant clerk in the Evidence Room."

Gibbs shuddered. That was a threat to be reckoned with.

Jenny Shepherd turned back to Gibbs. "You get anything from Kardez?"

"Not yet. He's maintaining his innocence, and that he's not Kardez. I'm going to have Ducky pop in to say hello; apparently Ducky knew him as a kid, ref'ed a few soccer games for him and Ansarad's bodyguard. We've got him for illegally entering the country, but I want him for more than that. I've got DiNozzo trying to trace his whereabouts for the past few days."

"Good. Keep me posted." Director Shepherd clicked off, busy with the errant wife. Gibbs slipped the cell back into his pocket and turned to follow his people into the hospital room where McGee lay.

A cry came from inside the hospital room where Ziva and Dr. Mallard had gone. "Gibbs! Get help!"

Gibbs dashed to the doorway: not good. Most of the room was white with an overlay of silvery machinery. There was a spot of green bouncing up and down on the ECG monitor overhead. The walls were a dingy beige.

There was a hell of a lot of red on the bed linens, all coming from the wrists of one Special Agent Timothy McGee.

Gibbs would never remember quite what happened after that. Time seemed to stand still. He heard Ducky utter a word that Gibbs didn't think he knew, and learned yet another one in Hebrew from Ziva. He heard them both yell again for medical assistance, felt white-coated personnel pull him back out of the way in their frenzy to get to McGee.

"Get some pressure on those wounds!"

"His pupils are blown! Is he breathing?"

"Who the hell left this scalpel here? Put it in the damn sharps container!"

"Looks drugged out of his gourd."

"O2 at one hundred percent. What size ET tube you want?"

"Let's try some naloxone, first. Bag him; let's see if we can reverse this. How the hell did he get so much morphine on board? Somebody pull the PCA pump and get it down to Bio-Med. Something must be wrong with the damn thing, and I sure as hell don't want the lawsuit on my license."

Ducky emerged from the mob scene, Ziva in his wake, pushing Gibbs out of the room. "Give them room to work, Jethro."

"Ducky…"

"Out." The medical examiner wasn't taking 'no' for an answer, and he was tugging Ziva along with them.

The two Marines were already at attention, alarm written large. "Sir?"

Gibbs was beyond noticing. His attention fixed on only one thing: what was going on inside the hospital room. He grabbed Ducky by the arm. "Ducky, what the hell happened?" Fear made him harsh; fear that he already knew the answer to his question.

It was Ziva who answered. "I should have insisted that we keep someone with him at all times, Gibbs," she said, taking the blame for what was transpiring. "Do you remember? I told you that the victim of the Scorpion's Flail suicides after committing the act that he is forced to do. I should have insisted that we keep someone with McGee at all times."

"You cannot blame yourself, Ziva," Ducky told her. "This is a hospital; one would expect that they would watch their charges closely." Then he frowned. "In fact, I don't understand this at all. This is an Intensive Care Ward; there are nurses going to and fro almost every minute."

One of the Marines nodded vigorously. "That's right, doc. There was a nurse that walked out just before you got here. Real pretty one, with long dark hair."

"So, what the hell happened in there, Marine?" Gibbs turned to Ziva. "See if you can find any nurses here that look like that."

"Will do, Gibbs."

Ducky chanced a look toward the closed door, noting the controlled chaos occurring within. "It didn't look bad, Jethro."

"There was a hell of a lot of blood—"

"It always looks bad, scattered about. In reality, I doubt he lost more than a cup or two. I should be more concerned with the quantity of morphine that he managed to deliver to himself, but they are giving him the antidote to that right now."

"I hope you're right, Ducky." Gibbs couldn't take his attention away from the door, and he heard Ducky's whispered rejoiner.

"So do I, Jethro. So do I."


	10. Got a Question

"McGeek should be doing this," DiNozzo muttered under his breath. "He _likes_ doing this."

The computer heard him, and declined to allow the site to finish loading the page. DiNozzo sub-vocalized a curse and tried again.

This time the page popped in, and a head shot of an attractive blonde appeared, her hair neatly tucked back in a twist and her dark blue cap covering all. Blue eyes twinkled on the computer screen, over impossibly high cheek bones that America's Next Top Model would kill for. Tony wrenched his eyes away from the enticing picture of RoseMarie Lundquist Ansarad, telling himself that not only did he not go after married women, he didn't go after married women who were pregnant and getting shot at.

"So why was someone shooting at you?" he asked the air around him. "We were supposed to think that it was a stray bullet. Instead, I find a sniper's nest in the building across the street, a nest with all the prints and evidence wiped as clean as someone can make it." He cocked his head, considering the head shot on the computer screen. "Who wants you dead?"

Tony delved into the records, finding them distressingly unrevealing: a bachelor's degree in nursing, neither the top nor the bottom of the class. Enlisted right after 9-11; lived in the New York City area, so Tony suspected that she had some friends that had been killed in the disaster. There were a lot of people who had done just that. Parents lived in upstate New York, four brothers who also lived there—RoseMarie must have been the 'wild' one, DiNozzo decided. More searching revealed that the four brothers were gainfully employed in various areas of construction, and that the family had been raised on the proceeds of Dad's own construction company. DiNozzo could see it: the lone girl in the family, overwhelmed by her brothers, striking out on her own.

RoseMarie Lundquist's service record was equally unremarkable. It held the usual good reviews, the advancements—but nothing unusual. A solid record to be proud of, and nothing to suggest a reason as to why someone would want to kill her.

DiNozzo turned to the woman's current life. That was more difficult, since less of her Afghani life was immortalized on the World Wide Web. There was a bit, something about her being the third wife of Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad—hey, wait! DiNozzo hit the back button. Third wife? He had thought that there were only two.

Not so. Wife number one by the name of Nadya was actually wife number two, making RoseMarie wife number three. DiNozzo kept reading, remembering that Ducky had indeed mentioned another wife. The first wife, who would have been much older than DiNozzo by now, had died in childbirth after giving Ansarad three sons and an untold number of daughters. That made Nadya wife number one and only for many years until Ansarad fell in love with Lt. Lundquist. Nadya had been less fruitful; the records suggested that she had presented her husband with only one son and—oh, by the way—a couple of daughters. DiNozzo, reading between the lines, suspected that this was at least a part of the reason that there was no love lost between husband and wife.

Still, Nadya had accompanied Ansarad on his journey to America. Why? This was a woman who, according the information presented here, wanted to keep to the old ways. Ansarad represented the new. Why was Nadya here, in this country filled with 'infidels'? More to the point: did it have something to do with the shooting of RoseMarie Lundquist Ansarad?

His head hurt. His arm hurt. He could take a pain-killer, but then driving home would be a little more challenging than usual, plus the joy of potentially getting pulled over by one of D.C.'s finest. Wouldn't that be humiliating?

Still…his arm hurt. DiNozzo glanced at the clock: 1 PM in the afternoon. He could pop something serious and then go to visit Abby. If he got too drowsy, he'd take a nap there. Yeah, that would work. He pulled out the little vial with a lot of pain relief stuffed inside each pill and dry-swallowed a singleton, rationalizing to himself that only one wouldn't make him nearly as sleepy. Just comfortable, and comfortable DiNozzo could do. After all, he was on medical leave, wasn't he? He wouldn't even be here right now, if this case wasn't so personal. Somebody, somewhere, had predicted that Chief Ali Ansarad would select Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard to be the go-between for Ansarad and his American security team and had used that prediction to create the current disaster. His arm stabbed him again, and DiNozzo looked at the pills in the vial in his hand. What the hell—the prescription called for two, and he wasn't going to be driving for the next few hours. He popped the second into his mouth.

Gibbs wanted revenge, in the form of a few air-tight arrests. Ziva wanted revenge, and body bags would do equally as well. DiNozzo didn't much care as to the method, and his arm told him that faster was better.

Next lead to follow up: Kardez. The man was known to be in Afghanistan last week. DiNozzo pulled out the fake passport telling the world that Kardez was Lashkar Sharif, from Uzbekistan. Abby had already proven that the paper was the real deal, suggesting that Kardez had some high level contacts with access to stealing blanks. DiNozzo gave Kardez high marks for selecting a country close to his own. What gave it away was that a check of Uzbekistan security—thank you, Interpol!—showed that there were three known Lashkar Sharifs in the country and not one of them was an international import businessman. One was a doctor, another a herder of goats, and the third was suspected of making his money from the growing of something that wasn't pomegranates and wasn't sold politely on the world markets. The last might be Kardez except for the fact that Interpol was keeping a close eye on him, and the picture that DiNozzo received showed that the man in the cell at NCIS headquarters wasn't the same man. Not unless the Lashkar Sharif in the photo had had recent and extremely fine plastic surgery to remove the long scar across his cheek. Oh, and a few years of orthodontics to fix the crooked teeth; then Kardez might be the one.

DiNozzo looked more closely at the passport in his hands, reading the marks. According to this fake document, Kardez—in his guise of Sharif—had left Uzbekistan sometime on Saturday. DiNozzo didn't bother to figure out the exact time, not with the various time zones to calculate. That might become necessary at a later date, but with any luck McGee would be back at his station to do that himself. Okay, left Uzbekistan and then the suspect arrived in Paris to spend the day sight-seeing—not! DiNozzo logged in a request to notify his French counterpart that they'd played host to a person of questionable character and to ask if they had any records of what tourist traps the man had seen.

There was no reason to believe that this part of the passport wasn't accurate. After all, why go to the trouble of obtaining the fake if it wasn't intended to be used? 'Sharif' had left Paris a day later, arriving in New York on Monday. Another slip of paper from Kardez's pocket let them know that he'd rented a high-end Buick with lots of luxuries from LaGuardia for the drive down to D.C.

Tony frowned. It wasn't adding up. Kardez arrived in Washington on Monday. Ansarad's first speech with its attendant disasters occurred on Tuesday.

McGee, however, had been snatched for the lube job to his brains on the Friday before Kardez ever left Afghanistan. Which let out Kardez as the chief brainwashing suspect. He might have done some of the arranging, but Ziva seemed to think that there weren't very many people in the world capable of doing the 'Scorpion Flail' and the concept that Kardez had one waiting in the United States for this very purpose was doubtful. Cost-effective it was not.

It wasn't adding up.

In fact, the only good thing about it was that the pain-killer was kicking in. His arm didn't hurt, and his thoughts were turning to something that M. C. Escher would be proud of. Clarity of mind was slipping away fast. He groaned to himself; he'd never had this kind of reaction to pain-killers before. On the other hand, his usual brand of pain-killers were the stuff that people got without a prescription. And, what with everything that had happened last night, the amount of sleep that he'd gotten in the past twenty-four hours wouldn't even qualify as a cat nap. No wonder he was ready to do a face-plant in the middle of the NCIS bullpen. Couldn't do that; Anthony DiNozzo had a reputation as a 'I can take anything you can throw at me' NCIS agent to maintain.

Time to visit Abby. She'd either pump him full of a caffeine-laced Caf-Pow to remove the fuzzies or…or…

Crap. Definitely time to see the Queen of Forensics. Falling asleep at his desk in front of the world in the middle of the day wasn't going to happen, not if Anthony DiNozzo had anything to say about it.

"Tony!" Strong hands pulled at him.

DiNozzo blinked confusedly. How had he gotten here? To Forensics? For the life of him, he couldn't remember the elevator ride here or even leaving his desk. He staggered.

Abby slipped her hands underneath his arms, supporting him. "What's wrong with you? Do you want me to call Ducky? Wait; I can't. Ducky's at the hospital, with McGee and Gibbs and the Ansarad guy. Tony, don't sit down there! Believe me, you won't like what it does to your pants! Here, sit here." She plopped him onto a stool, propping him up with one hand while she searched for some place more secure to stash him.

"Kardez wasn't in Washington when McGee got hisself snatched," Tony confided, inwardly appalled at how drunk he sounded. _Ah, what the hell_. Abby smelled nice. Was it perfume or formaldehyde? In this state DiNozzo couldn't tell the difference and for damn sure didn't care. He snickered.

"Floor, Tony. You can't fall off the floor."

Tony blinked again. Sometime between then and now, Abby had spread out a thick mattress pad onto the floor with a blanket and a small pillow. It looked incredibly inviting, though a small part deep inside of him was screaming _are you out of your mind? You're going to go to sleep on the cold floor of a Forensics Lab?_

_Well, yes, I am_. DiNozzo inhaled deeply of the formaldehyde perfume as Abby man-handled him down onto the mat and covered him with the blanket, arranging the pillow just so. It felt good, so good that he didn't want to open his eyes.

He had to. He'd come to Forensics for a reason, and taking a nap wasn't it. He forced his eyes open, feeling as much as seeing the lab rat staring down at him.

"How many of Ducky's pain-killers did you take, Tony?"

Tony giggled. "Not his, Abbs. Mine. They're mine. Paid ten bucks for 'em."

"Whatever, Tony. How many did you take?"

"One. Two," Tony added. He screwed up his face, trying to think. "Maybe three?" It could have happened. The events that had occurred in the past twenty minutes or so were a stubborn blur.

"Oooh," Abby grinned, "are you gonna have a head when you wake up!"

"'m not sleeping yet," DiNozzo informed her, trying to speak very clearly. "Got a question, Abbs."

"Okay, shoot. What's your question?"

"Uh…" What the hell was the question?

Abby was patient with him. "What were you working on, at your desk?"

Thinking was not his best asset at the moment. "My computer."

"That's a start," Abby told him dryly. "What were you working on, on your computer?"

That was more difficult. "The wife."

"Which one?"

Abby wanted to know everything. "Kardez."

"Kardez isn't the wife, Tony. Not unless Chief Ansarad is into some really kinky stuff, and somehow I just don't get those vibes from him."

DiNozzo slowed his words, trying for clarity, hoping that his thoughts would catch up. "Got a question about Kardez."

"Okay, shoot. What's your question?"

Hadn't she asked that before? Damn, all he wanted to do was to close…his…eyes…

* * *

The sour feeling in his stomach erupted into a sour taste in his mouth. DiNozzo felt himself being rolled over, and he was suddenly and thoroughly sick. Waves of nausea rolled through him, the wound in his arm a distant memory with this new problem surfacing.

"Think we ought to call Ducky, Gibbs?"

"Nope." Worried chuckle. "Seen this before. He'll sleep it off."

"Right here?"

"Unless you want to carry him home."

"Right here is fine with me, Gibbs."

DiNozzo groaned. Gibbs was here! "Boss?"

"Don't get up, DiNozzo."

"Wasn't planning on it, boss." _Might as well make my humiliation complete_.

"Good." Through watery eyes, DiNozzo saw Gibbs turn back to Abby. "I want you to run what's in these bags, Abby. Check this machine, make certain that it runs the way it's supposed to. Also, see if you can pull any prints off of this besides McGee's."

"McGee's?" Abby accepted the plastic baggie with something silver and green inside.

DiNozzo squinted, trying to make the image come clear.

Abby rescued him. "Gibbs, this is a scalpel. Why would McGee have a scalp—ooh."

There was a moment of dead silence. DiNozzo didn't want to look at Abby, didn't want to see her with more tears in her eyes. There were already enough of those going around.


	11. Best Time, Best Place

Not much more than a kid, really. Baby face, for all of his education; not a hell of a lot of street smarts. Easy target for DiNozzo to pick on.

Gibbs surveyed the still white figure on the hospital bed, trying to think of what he could have done to prevent this mess. It wasn't Ziva's fault, no matter what she said. McGee was Gibbs's responsibility; Gibbs should have picked up on the clues. Gibbs should have known that nothing would have prevented McGee from keeping his appointment with Ducky's computer over the weekend. Why hadn't he questioned it then? A good man might not be lying here on this bed, gut-shot with heavy bandages around his wrists where he'd tried to slice through the arteries and bleed himself to death.

"Boss?" Mumbled, barely able to be heard.

Gibbs moved in, tried for reassurance. "Right here, McGee. You're gonna be okay."

"What…what happened?"

_How do you tell a man that he tried to kill himself? There wasn't anything in any manual that covered this_. Gibbs took refuge in a stock line. "You're gonna be okay."

"Hurts."

"Yeah. I know, McGee." _Nobody dares let you have any morphine, not after what just happened. How the hell did you get that machine to overdose you? Hah; you're McGee. You can get any set of electronics to do just about anything, up to and including turning cartwheels_.

McGee tried to lift one arm, struggled when he found that it wouldn't obey him.

He was tied down. Gibbs knew that, had helped with the tying, feeling sick about doing it.

"Boss?" McGee turned scared eyes onto his team leader, trusting him to help.

"I know, McGee." Gibbs floundered, trying to think up some comforting explanation. "You…the stuff they gave you made you a little crazy. It's for your own protection." Not quite a lie.

"Oh. Okay." A long drawn out sigh. "Hurts."

Gibbs cringed inside. McGee didn't deserve this. Why had they picked on him?

Easy answer: McGee would be in the best place at the best time. Ansarad's enemies had determined who was going to be in charge of security, surveyed the personnel, and selected McGee as the most opportune person to suborn. There were four that they had to chose from, and of those four only McGee would be in a position to simply flip a switch in order to provide the cover Ansarad's enemies needed to assassinate the man. A simple task, for a complex deed. If Gibbs had been in their shoes, he would have made the same selection. McGee was the diversion.

There was no way that Gibbs could have predicted this. Hell, none of them even knew that Ducky's friend would be coming to town until after McGee had been taken—

Hey. If none of _them_ knew, then how the hell had Kardez and his cronies known? Furthermore, if DiNozzo was right with his research as to Kardez's whereabouts for the past few days, then how had Kardez arranged for McGee to get snatched? Who were the other players in the game, the ones that Kardez had called to set up this gambit?

It had been Ansarad himself that had insisted that Ducky be the go-between. Who would have known the connection?

Gibbs didn't like it one damn bit. Two many questions, and too few answers.

"Gibbs." Dr. Mallard came to the door, with Ziva, Tony, and Abby behind him. "A moment."

"Ducky?" They both knew that McGee couldn't be left alone, not even tied to the bed to prevent another suicide attempt.

Ducky turned to DiNozzo. "Mr. DiNozzo, if you would do the honors?"

"As long as I can do it sitting down." DiNozzo stumbled forward, reaching for the chair with one good arm.

Looked a lot better than when Gibbs had last seen him, Gibbs decided. A long nap in Abby's lair had done the agent a world of good. Gibbs gave up his chair to his agent, checking yet again that the straps holding McGee's arms to the bed were secure. Gibbs wasn't about to chance another disaster; what was in this room had been disaster enough.

Ducky drew him away from the door into the hallway where they could talk without disturbing the man within. "We have news, Jethro. Miss Scuitto?"

Abby plunged in. "Gibbs, I got through all the stuff that you gave me from McGee's room, and I'm finding nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch." She went on to elaborate. "The scalpel that they found in McGee's room? No prints. None. Everything was wiped away. I didn't even find McGee's prints on it, Gibbs."

"Which suggests that McGee did not use it to slash his wrists," Ziva observed. "One rarely considers fingerprints when attempting to commit suicide."

"That's not all, Gibbs." Abby took back the floor. "The machine that you had me check? The PCA pump, that gives a squirt of pain-killer through the IV every time you push the button? Works just fine, Gibbs. Squirts the right amount of fluid, so unless someone put the wrong amount of morphine into the little bag, McGee was getting the proper amount of pain-killer."

"So what about the little bag, Abby?"

"Also correct, Gibbs. I ran the quantitative tests, and what was labeled was what was in the bag."

Gibbs frowned. "But McGee had an overdose of the stuff. How'd he get it?"

"Good question, Gibbs. However it got into him, it wasn't through the machine or a mislabeled bag."

"Are you telling me that someone came in and gave it to him, Abby?"

"I have additional evidence, Jethro," Ducky cut in. "I had the opportunity to examine the lacerations to McGee's wrists. They were done by an amateur, one who knew nothing of how to slice through the arteries located in the area. Special Agent McGee knows that to properly cut into the artery of the wrist, the hand must be bent back in order to bring the artery to the surface. The problem that most would-be suicides have is that when the pain of the knife touches them, they curl their wrist inward, automatically protecting the vessel and thus thwarting their suicidal intentions."

"McGee would know that," Gibbs agreed.

"Bottom line, Jethro," and Ducky took over, "was that nothing in that room would account for Timothy's apparent suicide attempt."

"Which means that it wasn't attempted suicide," Gibbs realized. "It was attempted murder."

"But, Gibbs," Abby asked, "why would anyone want to kill McGee?"

It was Ziva who answered her. "Because, Abby, someone believes that McGee holds the answers to this mystery."

"And that means," Gibbs added grimly, "that we're going to have to get inside his head."

* * *

"No, Donald, I will not cancel my speech to the congressmen," Ansarad said stubbornly. "To do as you ask would repudiate everything that I stand for! I cannot let my enemies win!"

"Ali, they will win if you let them kill you!" Ducky insisted. "Cancel the dinner! Speak with the congressmen privately, if you feel that you must converse with them."

They stood in Ansarad's hotel suite, the remnants of a light meal sitting on the coffee table in the middle of the room. Though the lights were on, it was still dim; NCIS security teams had closed the curtains to prevent any sniper from getting in a lucky shot. In better times, Ducky would have appreciated the décor. Two brocaded sofas enclosed the coffee table to provide a sitting area for conversation. An elegant writing table off to the corner offered high tech access to the internet.

Ducky saw none of it. "Ali, your own wife has fallen victim to those monsters, not to mention the security people assigned to your protection. Ali, these people are my friends! You are putting us all in danger with your foolishness."

Ali embraced the medical examiner. "Ah, Donald, you have always been a good friend to me. Can you not trust me in this? I would not act this way without cause."

"Then what is the cause, Ali? What do you hope to accomplish?"

If he could, Ansarad would have stared pensively out through the window. The curtains prevented the vision, but not the pause. "Donald, it has been a long time since you have been in my world. Life has become very cheap to too many of us."

"Including this man?" Ducky held out a photograph.

It was clear that Ali Ansarad recognized the man. He blanched. "Omar Kardez. He is a man from my villages. Why do you show me his picture, Donald?"

"His _recent_ picture, Ali, taken a few hours ago. He is here in this country. Illegally, as it were."

"What is he doing here?"

"I was rather hoping that you could tell me. Our intelligence suggests that this is one of the people who oppose your ideas."

"That is true." Ansarad was thinking furiously. "He is one of those who style themselves as the 'Lions of the Desert'." He indicated the picture. "He is a cousin to my wife. He is not a threat. Not Omar."

The silence invited Dr. Mallard to break it. He declined.

Ansarad was the one to give in. "Your man; your agent. Chelid tells me he is doing better."

"Not really," Ducky told him. "Agent McGee tried to commit suicide a short time ago." He watched closely for Ansarad's reaction.

He got it. Ansarad's eyes narrowed. "Suicide? You are certain?"

"There aren't many other conclusions to jump to, when you find a man with his wrists slit open and a scalpel in his hand," Ducky replied, keeping his own emotions in check. This was the key; what would his friend's response be? What role did Ali Ansarad play in this affair?

"I am sorry to hear of it," Ansarad told him formally.

Ducky could see the Afghani chieftain close down, pull his thoughts inside. He probed further. "What do you know of this, Ali?"

Ansarad tightened his lips. "There are those in my towns who would do anything to get their own way, including killing innocent men, women, and children. My own child is at risk, Ducky, and my wife! The old ways are still too powerful, Donald. We must move into the new millennium, bring new ways of living to my people."

"And how will your death accomplish this, Ali?"

"My sons are prepared to take my place, Donald. I do not fear death, not for myself. My cause will go forward, in my name, with my sons and heirs. My sons will bring their sisters and wives with them, and we will demonstrate to the world that we honor them as much as any on this Earth."

"You haven't answered my question, Ali," Ducky said sternly. "Martyrdom rarely benefits anyone, least of all the man who dies. All it accomplishes is for there to be one less man to speak for truth. More than one: your wife has been hurt, as is Agent McGee."

Ansarad still refused to answer Ducky's question. Instead, he made a request. "Donald, in this I trust you: if I should fall, insist that my RoseMarie remain here in this country and raise my son as an American. Promise me that you will convince her. It is my will and my wish."

Ducky scowled. "I have only known her for a short time, Ali, but I suspect it will be difficult to convince her. She does not impress me as someone who is easily convinced."

"Nevertheless, you must do as I ask, Donald. I would not have her left defenseless in my world."

"Does she not have any friends among yours?"

"Not enough, and none that have my power. There are many who fear her because she brings new ways. Promise me, Donald," Ansarad insisted. "Promise me, for the love of family."

"I will promise to try, Ali," Ducky agreed reluctantly. "I can't promise to succeed, only to try." He allowed one corner of his mouth to rise. "Are you so certain that the lady is carrying a son for you? It could be a daughter."

Ansarad grinned. "She wouldn't dare!"


	12. Memories

Gibbs looked around, and grimly approved of what he saw. This would suit their purposes.

The safe house sat on an old abandoned farm, looking for all the world like a place waiting for some rehab specialist to recognize its potential and turn it into a multi-million dollar home for someone rich to purchase.

It wasn't. The number on the 'for sale' sign sitting by the dirt driveway went to a phone staffed by the CIA. Ordinary lookers were turned off by a pleasant voice that informed them that the asking price was outrageous. Those who could afford the outrageousness were given the runaround to a multitude of voice mailboxes that ever so politely refused to take messages.

The occasional caller who knew what the place represented was transferred to a receptionist to whom he or she could pass whatever coded message needed passing. All in all, the old abandoned farmhouse served a new purpose: espionage.

Gibbs knew that, and had called in a few favors to make use of the place. It had several things in its favor: it was secluded. There was a wide expanse of open ground that an enemy needed to cross in order to enter the abode, an expanse where anyone inside armed with a gun and a decent aim could prevent that entry whenever they wished. Another thing: the walls—which to the untrained eye looked like the clapboard siding was about to fall off—were actually reinforced steel comparable to the latest Abrams battle tank rolling off of the assembly line. A bunker-buster could get in, but Gibbs doubted that anything short of that could gain entrance, not unless Gibbs and company issued an engraved invitation.

That was going to be important. Both Gibbs and Ziva had spotted a tail as they were leaving the military base with their charge. They'd managed to lose two of them, but neither agent was willing to state that there wasn't another couple lying low. Even the chopper flying past—was it a traffic watch, or something more sinister? One could take paranoia just so far, or perhaps not far enough. Only time would tell.

Gibbs pulled the sedan into the garage attached to the farmhouse. It was another anomaly, for most farmhouses were built before an attached garage was a benefit. Not a problem; the average person didn't notice, and those who weren't so average would sigh and realize that their quarry was safe within doors.

Gibbs picked up the semi-automatic from the floor of the passenger's seat, unfolding himself from behind the wheel of the sedan. On the other side of the car, Ziva too was slipping out of the car. Gibbs scanned the empty interior of the garage. "Clear the house," he told her. "DiNozzo, you're with me."

"Right." Ziva nudged open the door leading to the house and poked her head in. Finding nothing living, and as an added benefit keeping her head intact, she slid sideways through the door and vanished into the safe house.

She was back within minutes. "Clear," she reported. "We can move in."

"Good," Gibbs grunted. He turned to the occupants of the back seat. "Ready?"

McGee managed a game smile. "Anything is better than the hospital," he offered.

Ziva's face darkened, though she kept it from McGee. _Don't count on it_.

Gibbs too kept his face passive. He opened the back door to the sedan and, hooking his hand underneath McGee's arm, all but hauled the injured agent out from the car. Gibbs slipped his own shoulder under the arm, supporting McGee's weight. "Abby, get the other side of McGee. DiNozzo, see what you can do with one wing to bring the supplies in. Ziva, keep a watch. You and I'll be doing a sweep of the exterior once we get McGee settled."

Inside the place was neat, even though it had been long enough between cleanings for the dust to settle. From looking over the floor plans, Gibbs knew that there were three levels to the place: bedrooms upstairs, the living area on the ground level, and an underground basement that had been fortified with an additional surrounding layer of steel-reinforced concrete. It would be possible for an enemy attack to succeed, but it would take a lot of firepower and a fair amount of luck.

Gibbs aimed for the living quarters; more specifically, for the brown leather sofa that dominated the room. McGee, from the look of him, was going down. Beads of sweat stood out on the man's face, and his jaw was hanging open from the sheer act of taking in oxygen. The knees were turning into aspic. Abby too was struggling to keep up her side of the agent's weight. Gibbs made a decision: stooping, he swiftly twisted the man around and hoisted him over his shoulder, carrying McGee the last few feet to the sofa.

McGee was out. "Hoist his feet in the air," Gibbs ordered tersely, making certain that the man was still breathing. Yes, there it was, the chest gently rising and falling, proving that they hadn't lost him yet. _Still might happen. The next few hours weren't looking to be easy ones_. Abby helped to position the wounded man, tucking a pillow under his head and a blanket around him.

Gibbs watched the color seep back into McGee's cheeks, not satisfied with the quantity but unable to do anything about it. Only time would bring the man back to health.

Not sanity. It wouldn't remove the self-doubt that plagued McGee's every waking moment. What did they do to him? Gibbs had no doubt that the next report that would be required of Officer Ziva David would be an expose on this 'Scorpion's Flail' that had been used on McGee. Not that it would do all that much good. So much of the technique, if Gibbs understood Ziva correctly, was steeped in Middle Eastern mysticism that the Western mind had difficultly wrapping itself around.

And the next report, from Gibbs himself, would be one of several reporting on McGee's fitness for duty, a report whose content was in extreme doubt at the moment. Gibbs's report would be one, and some shrink approved by some stuffed shirt would write another after providing torture of another sort. Hell, maybe letting the man die here and now would be the easy way out for him.

Not for Abby. The lab rat was still convinced that they were going to pull off a miracle for her fellow geek. Failure wasn't an option, not for Abby, whose knowledge of forensics was exceeded only in her faith in her team. To lose McGee would be to lose her as well.

Gibbs stopped Ziva, who along with Tony was bringing in the last of the groceries that they'd hurriedly stashed in the trunk of the sedan. "Run a sweep of the land, make sure that we weren't followed. I don't want any interruptions once Ducky gets here. We'll let McGee rest until then, get his strength back."

"Not too long." It wasn't an argument, just a statement of fact. "The longer we let McGee rest, the harder it will be to break him. I do not enjoy torturing teammates, Gibbs, not even in a good cause."

Gibbs frowned. "You were the one who suggested it, Ziva. You got a better solution?"

"No." Ziva turned away, unable to face her superior. "I don't even know if this will work. Not many people have survived this long, Gibbs."

"Then McGee will be one of the few." Gibbs couldn't allow himself to think otherwise. "We already know that he didn't try to commit suicide. Somebody tried to kill him."

"Yes. That is puzzling, Gibbs. Very puzzling."

"So let's find some answers." Gibbs poked his hand through the curtains, surveying the countryside overgrown with weeds. "Ducky'll be here in ten minutes. We'll get started then."

* * *

"I got the report from Director Shepherd, boss," DiNozzo said, watching Dr. Mallard set up his little black bag on the kitchen table. "Ansarad hasn't made any phone calls that we can't account for while he's been here in America. If he's been setting anything up, he hasn't done it here."

"Makes sense," Gibbs grunted. "Too much chance of exposure. He'd've arranged things back home."

Ducky couldn't help but turn around. "There is more to this than meets the eye, Jethro. I _saw_ Ali's face when I mentioned to him that Timothy had tried to kill himself. He was appalled."

"But he knew something."

"I shouldn't like to think that—"

"Nevertheless, he knew something."

Ducky sighed. "Yes."

It was enough. Gibbs turned to DiNozzo. "Anything else?"

"Chelid, the bodyguard, also made a couple of calls that we haven't been able to trace. The calls went to drop phones, purchased with cash at a local department store. One was the night that Ansarad and entourage arrived; the second was just a few hours ago. Would've loved to have been a fly on the wall during those calls," Tony remarked to the air. "You think we may have found the connection?"

"I don't know, DiNozzo. You think you can pull the answer out of Chelid?" The sarcasm flowed heavily, covering up a heavy dose of worry. "It's not like we can tie _him_ up, pump him full of drugs, and torture him, like they did McGee." Gibbs indicated the syringe that Ducky had laid on the table and the ropes that they had brought with him. "Ziva back? Let's get this over with."

"Right here, Gibbs." The Israeli Mossad officer wiped her feet on the mat before coming in through that back door to the kitchen. "There is no one outside. Ducky was not followed."

"I evaded them," Ducky corrected grimly. "I haven't forgotten everything I learned. That, or they were incompetent. Always a possibility," he added.

"Should we send Abby upstairs?" DiNozzo wanted to know.

Gibbs shook his head. "I gave her the choice. She's going to see it through with the rest of us." He led the way into the living room where McGee lay on the sofa, Abby sitting beside him. He frowned; his junior agent didn't look any better, and sure as hell didn't look up to the process that they were about to put him through. No help for it now. "McGee. You ready?"

McGee tightened his lips. "Let's get this over with," he said, unaware that he was echoing the very same sentiments that his boss had uttered just seconds earlier. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just try to remember everything that you can," Ziva told him. She and Abby helped him to sit up on the sofa, steadying him when he needed a moment to keep from flopping over. Ziva slipped a blindfold over his eyes, and nodded to the others.

DiNozzo took over. "Bring him," he ordered, lowering his voice and allowing a hint of a bad copy of a British accent to creep in. Gibbs couldn't help but wonder just which movie actor DiNozzo was channeling at the moment.

Didn't matter. Gibbs grabbed McGee by one arm and Ziva by the other, hoisting him from the sofa and forcing him to walk to the kitchen, keeping him on his feet when he would have stumbled. Abby trailed behind, biting her lip.

Gibbs shoved his agent onto the kitchen chair, Ziva catching him when McGee would have fallen off. She snatched up the thick rope that they'd brought along, waiting until Gibbs had ripped open McGee's shirt.

The cloth tore with a loud _riiiip!_ Everyone there winced, McGee included. _Especially_ McGee; the sound reverberated through the kitchen and—worse—through his memories.

"Tie him," DiNozzo ordered tersely, keeping his voice foreign.

Ziva looped several yards of rope around McGee's chest, the harsh strands rubbing against bare skin. The pristine white dressing above his waist stood out in bold relief, and Gibbs noted that even the Mossad officer couldn't bring herself to touch the injury that she'd been forced to inflict. How long ago had it been? Days? It sounded wrong somehow to be counting time in _days_ when this should be more properly styled a _nightmare_.

Whatever it was, it was having the right effect on the victim. McGee had once again gone white, beads of sweat bunching up on his forehead. His mind may not have remembered this treatment but the rest of him did and the rest of him was scared spitless. Gibbs noted the minute trembling of the hands resting on the kitchen table, and he forced the rest of his own anger into a small grenade inside himself. There would be a time for that grenade to explode. Now was not the time.

"Shoot him up."

Gibbs was the one who stretched McGee's arm out onto the kitchen table, held it in place so that Ducky could slide home the tip of the syringe, slowly pushing the plunger and infusing the clear fluid inside the barrel into his victim. McGee moaned, trying to pull away; the memories were taking over even though he knew that this was a re-enactment. It wasn't the devil's brew that his torturers had used, Ducky had told them. No one in the room knew exactly what that was including Ziva, but this particular drug would steal away some of McGee's ability to think coherently, making it easier for him to access the walled-off memories that they needed. An added 'benefit', Ducky told them grimly, was that the medicine would sting as it entered the vein. That too would send McGee back to the horror of the past weekend.

One minute. Two. As they watched, the drug took hold and McGee's head dropped to his chest. Breath whistled harshly past his lips. Abby choked back a sob, her own hands trembling as much as McGee's.

Ziva slipped behind him, her mouth close to McGee's ear. "What do you see?" she whispered. "How many men are there?"

McGee moaned. "No. No. Don't hurt me."

"How many men?"

"Three. Four. Six."

"What do they look like?"

McGee struggled against the ropes holding him in the chair. "I don't know. I don't know!"

Ziva signaled to DiNozzo. Eyes hooded, DiNozzo dropped his voice to its deepest. "Hold him," he instructed. Gibbs moved in and pulled McGee's blindfolded head back, exposing the agent's chest laid bare under the ripped shirt.

That was Ducky's signal. Lips tightly clenched, he applied slender wires to McGee's chest. The wires were hooked up to a machine that normally provided pain relief through gentle electrical stimulation—but McGee wouldn't feel any relief. His mind wouldn't let him. He moaned in terror, already in the grips of his nightmare. It only confirmed what Ziva had told them: that McGee's torment had included powerful currents of electricity.

"Wrists," DiNozzo said harshly, prodded on by Ziva.

McGee's movements became frenzied. "No! Please, no!" He struggled to get loose, fighting against the ropes that bound him to the chair, completely in the grip of his memories. Alarmed, Ziva grabbed hold of the chair, preventing McGee from throwing himself to the floor, or even breaking the chair altogether in his frantic need to escape. She signaled to Gibbs: _do it now!_

There wouldn't be a better moment. Gibbs used all of his weight to force McGee's wrists together—the final signal.

McGee cried out—an agonized scream of despair, a wordless howl of protest.

Not yet; Ziva abandoned her whisper. "See them!" she demanded. "What do they look like?"

"I don't know! I don't know!"

"What do they want?"

"Stop!"

"Tell me what they look like!" Ziva insisted. "You can see them!"

"I can't! I can't! Please, please, I can't see them!"

"Turn up the power," DiNozzo ordered, playing the role that had been assigned to him, hating every minute of it, knowing that he would see Abby's face in his own nightmares as she fled the room, her face covered with her hands and sobbing.

Ducky slipped the knob to the next setting, barely noticeable.

McGee noticed. He felt it far more than any human had a right to do. The chair he sat in creaked and rocked with his terrified efforts to escape his remembered torment, and it was all Gibbs and Ziva could do to keep him from falling onto the kitchen floor.

"What did they say?"

"Turn it off!" McGee cried hoarsely. "Turn it off! I'll turn it off!"

Not much time. "What did they look like?" Ziva demanded again. "Tell me their faces!"

"I'll do anything!" McGee gasped. "I'll turn it off! They wore black masks! I'll turn it off! I'll—" He stopped, the air halted in his throat.

"He's choking." Ducky swiftly took over. "Untie him, quickly."

Too late. McGee collapsed against the ropes holding him to the chair, his head lolling forward onto his chest.

"Ducky?" This was not supposed to happen. Gibbs hung onto his agent, finally pulled out his pocket knife in order to slice through the ropes.

"Hold his arm steady. I need to get some epinephrine into him." Ducky swiftly drew up yet another syringe of fluid, using a tourniquet to enable him to slide the sharp needle into McGee's vein. Blood leaked out in his haste to inject the medication, seeping into the surrounding flesh and darkening it.

Not that it mattered. McGee already had enough bruises to qualify as an addict. Ducky finished injecting his patient and discarded the needle, then felt for the pulse at the side of McGee's jaw. "He's in shock," Ducky informed them grimly. "We need to lay him flat. The sofa, perhaps. Mr. DiNozzo, I need you to return to my vehicle and fetch the canister of oxygen that I placed in the back seat. Quickly, please."

"Ducky?"

"Help me untie him, Jethro. Immediately, if you please. I need him flat, now."

"My knife." Ziva had her blade out and was slicing through the ropes that held the unconscious man to the kitchen.

Gibbs didn't wait for the others. He wrestled the limp body over his shoulder, adrenaline offering him more strength than he usually had. "Get the door. I'll put him on the sofa."

Ducky scurried ahead, holding open the door between the kitchen and the living room, and Ziva pulled a tall floor lamp back out of Gibbs's intended path. Gibbs man-handled his field agent onto the sofa, Ziva grabbing for McGee's head and easing him onto the soft cushions, trying to keep her hands from slipping on the beads of sweat that had popped out all over their charge.

Ducky cast worried eyes on the unconscious body being lowered onto the sofa. "I didn't think that we'd need it, Jethro, but—like the proverbial Boy Scouts—I like to be prepared for any eventuality. There was a low probability of McGee reacting to my medications in this fashion, but not, as you saw, nonexistent. Hence, the oxygen that I sequestered in the back seat of my car. Ah, thank you, Mr. DiNozzo. Turn the nozzle so that the arrow is pointing to 'two', if you would be so kind." Ducky applied the plastic mask over McGee's face, listening to the slight hissing of the oxygen whistling through the plastic tubing. "That's it; feet up. Yes, Abigail, place the pillows under his feet to elevate them. Another pillow wouldn't hurt. Yes, that will help."

"Ducky?" Gibbs's voice held a warning. _Tell me McGee is going to be okay_.

"Perhaps a liter or two of intravenous fluids would not be amiss—ah, welcome back, Timothy," Ducky said, peering into the face of his newest—and most lively—patient, relief evident.

McGee stared at him, clearly not focusing, his face white and his skin cool with the remnants of shock. He tried to say something; nothing emerged from his throat.

"Don't try to talk, Timothy," Ducky warned. "I imagine that your throat is a bit sore. Rest."

"mm." McGee allowed his eyes to drift closed once more, concentrating on passing air in and out of his lungs.

Then his eyelids snapped open. "They wore masks! Black ski masks!" he told them in a rasping whisper. "I never saw their faces. There were six of them, probably all of Middle Eastern descent. The skin color on their hands was right, and the accent sounded Middle Eastern. They usually spoke some other language, unless they were talking to me." He coughed, too many words spilling out at once.

"Here." Abby was ready with water for him, and Ziva helped her fellow agent to steady the glass.

"Thanks," McGee gasped, sinking back onto the sofa.

Then he began to shake. "I remember," he whispered dully. "I remember it all."

"McGee?" There was no head whack for this.

The trembling didn't stop. "They got me just inside the garage to my apartment. I parked my car, got out, and they grabbed me as I went toward the elevator. They were waiting for me." His voice got more hoarse. "They took me someplace where they could work."

"How long was the trip?"

McGee was ready for the question. "I estimated my pulse at about ninety beats per minute, allowing for the adrenalin," he said. They had to strain to hear his words. "Not more than ten minutes. More likely five."

"That limits where the place where they took you could be," DiNozzo acknowledged. "Right turns? Left turns? Railroad tracks?"

McGee tried to remember. "We moved pretty slowly," he said finally. "No highways. No railroad tracks."

"We left late that evening," Ziva recalled. "Rush hour traffic had finished. That would not interfere with the speed of the trip."

"You live pretty close to the Beltway," Gibbs said. "You sure they didn't take it?"

McGee coughed again, needed more water before he could continue. "Yes." Another cough.

"How about names?" DiNozzo wanted to know. "You said they wore masks. All the time?"

"Yes. Black knit ski masks." McGee frowned. "No. No, there was this one time. They thought I was out. I saw him; it was the tall guy. Six foot, maybe. It was hard to tell, looking up at him."

"Features?"

"Regular, even. Dark brown eyes, looked cold. Uni-brow. Bad skin. Long nose, thin lips." McGee winced. "Bad breath."

"What else?" Gibbs wouldn't let him quit. This was why he had tortured his own agent, and he'd be damned if he'd let McGee's sacrifice be for nothing.

McGee closed his eyes, the beads of sweat popping out once again across his forehead. Abby wiped them away, and McGee licked his lips to persuade them to work. He forced his eyes back open. "There was a name. One of them called to the other, and got scolded."

"What was the name?" Gibbs zeroed in.

McGee tried to remember, and the after-effects of his ordeal interfered. "It was…I…I don't remember, boss," he confessed, the shaking more evident. "Dammit! I don't remember."

"It's all right, McGee," Ziva soothed. "It will come back to you. The worst is over. You've beaten it."

"I have?" The hope in McGee's eyes was almost unbearable. He held his breath, trying to keep the shaking from taking control. "It's over?"

"It's over," Gibbs told him, working to sound convincing.

"Over," McGee repeated, as though he couldn't believe it. "It's over."

"Go to sleep, Timothy," Ducky instructed him. "You will be safe here."

"Sleep." The eyes closed. McGee was already half-way there. The tremors slowed, though didn't stop.

Gibbs drew Ziva away, and DiNozzo, not to be left out, followed.

"It's over?" Gibbs wanted to know, keeping his voice down. "He's going to remember everything? That's a lot to promise, Ziva."

"If he believes that he will remember, perhaps he will." Ziva had more doubts than she cared to share with the man that she had wounded.

"But you don't know for certain," DiNozzo hissed, glancing nervously at McGee. Abby had stayed behind, was putting a blanket over her fellow geek and tucking it in.

"No, Tony, I do not," Ziva hissed back. "No one ever _lives_ after the Scorpion's Flail! Every case I have heard of, the victim is either killed or commits suicide immediately after performing whatever action is required. McGee is the first, which is why we are all treading new water."

"Breaking new ground, or treading water?"

"Whichever." Ziva made a dismissive gesture. "The point is, no one knows! In every case where the Scorpion's Flail has been used, the victim has either been killed while carrying out the desired task or has committed suicide immediately thereafter."

"Could it _not_ be the Scorpion's Flail?" Gibbs asked. "How sure are you?"

"At this point, not at all, Gibbs," she admitted. "What we have observed is certainly consistent with the technique. The short period of time for the brainwashing, the bruises over venous access points, and—most especially—the crossing of the wrists as a signal that the torture will begin again are all hallmarks. But McGee's survival argues against it."

"Maybe there wasn't enough time to work on that?" Tony suggested. "We're just talking a weekend, here."

Ziva shook her head. "Fast results. I believe you call it 'down and dirty'. It is not elegant, but it works. As it almost did in this situation. McGee attempted to turn off the power to the communications console at the International Businessmen's Dinner. If he had been successful, Ansarad would almost certainly be dead. The surprise to me is that McGee did not die under the surgeon's knife, 'willing' himself to death."

"He is a strong young man," Ducky protested, inserting himself into the discussion.

"How many times have you known 'strong young men' to die unexpectedly?" she countered. "They are the ones who are also injured in spirit, for whom death is a welcome release. If this were truly the Scorpion's Flail, then McGee would have attempted the same."

Gibbs let the facts mull through his mind. There was so much that simply wasn't falling into place. What was the motive here, and how did it fit? That someone wanted Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad dead was the easy motive, but who? There were too many candidates, some of which Gibbs and his team still knew nothing about. And how did Wife Number Two fit in? A less careful team would have said 'collateral damage' and let it slide through. However, RoseMarie Lundquist Ansarad had been hit by a sniper's bullet, which said that she was a definite target. She had been several yards away from Ansarad when it had all gone down. Gibbs was willing to allow that someone could miss a shot, but this went well beyond 'missing' for any self-respecting sniper. No, Mrs. Ansarad had been someone's target. The question was: who? Maybe she was the target all along and not Ansarad himself, but that too wasn't rational. Ansarad was the leader of the pack. And why had someone taken _another_ crack at McGee?

The answers were hidden inside the head of the man whose eyes were closed, lying on the sofa, pretending that he felt better than he did. McGee was already asleep, Abby standing guard over him like a Chihuahua ready to bite the ankle of any who dared approach.

Not helping. McGee wasn't going to be able to remember anything for the next several hours, not until he'd had some sleep uninterrupted by medical personnel and would-be assassins and maybe not even then. That had been the other half of the reason that Gibbs needed him out of the hospital, the first being that no self-respecting medical facility would put up with what they had needed to do to McGee. It was an added benefit that Gibbs and company would allow him to recover here in this safe house in something approaching comfort.

They now had a lot more to go on, thanks to McGee's bravery in facing his nightmare. Six people had participated in the brainwashing—and eight men had shown up at Ansarad's first talk, trying to kill him, suggesting that there were more floating around than had attended McGee's mental conversion. That assault the first night hadn't been merely a diversion for the sniper; those men were firing real bullets. The slug through DiNozzo's arm proved that.

Or had it? Sure, DiNozzo had a wounded wing, and there was a Marine on sick leave who would be walking with crutches for a couple of weeks, but there hadn't been any fatalities and there should have been. A few degrees lower in the aiming of those weapons, and there could have been a couple dozen civilians killed and even more wounded. It didn't make sense.

Gibbs knew that the terrorist nest was someplace close by, within a few minutes of driving distance. McGee's memories proved that. In addition, the nest had to be someplace secluded, someplace where a man's screams for forty-eight hours would go either unheard or unnoticed. That let out a lot of places in the D.C. urban sprawl.

They needed a map, some way to rule out the various places to where McGee could have been taken. Five minutes of slow travel suggested a place less than two miles from McGee's apartment and, if Gibbs remembered correctly, there was a spot where two railroad tracks crossed. That would eliminate nearly fifty percent of the territory to be covered.

That meant returning to NCIS headquarters. Gibbs scanned his tired and wounded team and found things wanting. Not in spirit; no. They would go to hell and back for him if he asked. Gibbs couldn't ask. Not McGee, halfway between _sleep_ and _coma_ on the sofa. Not Abby, ready to kick forensic butt to support her friends. Not Ziva, agonizing over her perceived failure to recognize the signs of something that shouldn't be here in the States. Not DiNozzo, taking his arm out of its sling and pretending that it didn't hurt.

Not Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard, either. Gibbs's longtime friend was feeling betrayed, as though he'd led the NCIS team into this mess, and he was not happy in the slightest. He felt _used_; of that, Gibbs was certain. Someone, knowing of the relationship between Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad and Donald Mallard, had put this series of events into motion.

It clicked. Leroy Jethro Gibbs felt as though he'd received one of his own whacks upside the head.

Someone _had_ known of the relationship between Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad and Donald Mallard.

That put a whole new spin on things.

His team looked up at him. They knew that look. They knew that the case was going to come to a roaring close, because the key was there, right in Gibbs's hands. Team Leader Leroy Jethro Gibbs issued orders.

"Ducky, I need to know more about the political situation back in Ansarad's home town."

"Right away, Jethro. Who would like to see him dead, and who would prefer him alive? What does the line of succession look like? Who stands to profit if and when Ali is killed here in America?"

"Good. Abby—" he called softly to the lab rat sitting next to McGee.

"You need a map to look at," she jumped in, proving that she had been listening to their discussion from afar. "There's a computer set up upstairs; I'll make it do tricks like McGee was on the keyboard. It won't be as good as what I can do back at Headquarters, but it'll be enough. Pull up McGee's address with a two mile diameter around it, then get rid of any location that's outside of railroad tracks. You need a list of all the businesses that are left in the target zone."

"Right." Gibbs was feeling better. His team was at _work_. None of this 'responding to the enemy' crap. It was time to _attack_. "Jenny's got the speech with Ansarad and the congressmen covered. There are going to be Marines and Secret Service types all around, so whatever is being planned, a frontal assault isn't it."

"We find out what they're planning, and stop it." Ziva's face looked as determined as it ever had.

"We find out _where_ they are, and stop _them_." Tony put a slightly different twist on things. He hauled the sling over his head and tossed in onto a nearby chair. "Abby can call us the most likely spots en route."

Gibbs felt the comforting weight of his service piece at his waist. "Let's go, people."


	13. In A Pickle

Ducky hung up his cell phone, putting one hand to the dashboard to prevent himself from being tossed from side to side in response to Gibbs's driving. "Jethro, it appears that Ali is not overstating his importance in his region. He is widely regarded as a modernizing influence in the area, and his sons even more so. His marriage to Lt. Lundquist and her subsequent actions in educating the female children have done much to bring in tremendous wealth and opportunity but has widened the political gap between the Old Guard and the New. Jethro, this is critical: should Ali be killed, his eldest son would take over the reins of leadership and would acquire even more Western ties for the region."

"So what you're saying is that it would be foolish for Ansarad's enemies to kill him."

"Essentially: yes."

Gibbs nodded, concentrating on the curves in the road, taking them faster than he should. He had places to get to, dammit! "Abby come up with anything?"

"Got her right here, boss." Tony put his own cell on speaker, so that the Forensics Specialist could hear them all.

"What'cha got, Abbs?"

Tony turned up the volume. "A lot, Gibbs. I was able to cut out almost fifty percent of the area around McGee's home just with the railroad tracks. In addition to the two you knew about, there was another line off to the east that eliminated another ten percent. Then I took out the suburban homes, figuring that the neighbors would be likely to hear all the shouting going on and would have called the police to downsize the keg party."

"Keep going, Abby. We're almost to D.C."

"Now it doesn't look so good, Gibbs. I eliminated all the big businesses. You can't brainwash a federal agent in the middle of a supermarket and not be noticed, and that took out some blocks here and there."

"What's left?" Impatiently.

Abby was not a happy camper. "Like twelve different places, Gibbs, and all of 'em could hold a bunch of terrorists torturing someone. Like, one is a car repair shop. That's pretty noisy. Another is a big warehouse, and who knows what they have inside there?"

"Ziva, write the addresses down. We'll have to check 'em all out," Gibbs decided grimly. "Abby, have you heard from the director?"

"Yes, Gibbs. She's sending out a team for protection. They should be here in about an hour."

"Not any faster than that? What are we running here, a pizza delivery service?" Gibbs had debated not leaving Abby and McGee alone in the safe house until the protection detail had arrived, but the need was great. Ansarad's final speech was that evening, and they would need the time to track down the assassination squad. Every second counted. Which took priority: two NCIS personnel or a roomful of congressmen and their invited guest? Now that McGee had remembered some of the details of his abduction, there should be no further need for anyone to try to kill him. The assassination squad should be more interested in keeping out of Gibbs's reach than covering their tracks. Even if Gibbs had miscalculated, Abby and McGee could take refuge in the basement bunker with its steel-reinforced concrete until the protection detail arrived to bail them out. No, given the possibilities, leaving Abby and McGee behind was the reasonable thing to do. He sighed, the sound audible even to Abby over the cell phone. "What're those addresses?"

"Text them to me, Abby," Tony called out, a sideways glance at Gibbs. "I'll dial 'em into the GPS."

Gibbs took another turn too fast, the tires squealing. "I don't need McGee," he mock-growled under his breath. "I got a whole damn team of geeks."

* * *

Ducky closed the door to the sedan, and leaned his head in. "Be careful, Jethro."

"You, too, Ducky. I may be leaving you with the more dangerous job."

Ducky gestured to the men loitering around the grounds of the Marquis Hotel, all trying to look as though they belonged there instead of watching the area for an impending attack. "I have ample back up, and Director Shepherd is waiting inside."

"Still…be careful."

"I will." Ducky doffed a non-existent hat and headed into the hotel lobby.

Gibbs turned to his two remaining team members. "Run down those addresses that Abby got. Which one looks the most promising?"

"This dry cleaning place looks pretty good, boss. It's close, and all the clothes would muffle any screams coming out," Tony suggested.

"I think that this pet store would be the better option," Ziva argued. "The sounds would be mistaken for cats and dogs. Parrots will also screech very loudly and can sound human."

"How close is the pet shop?"

Ziva started to give him the answer. "It's—"

"Wait."

Gibbs flicked a glance to the passenger seat. "DiNozzo?"

"Look at this one." Tony stared at the address of another location targeted by Abby.

"I'm driving, DiNozzo. Which one is it?"

"Sour Pickles Recording Studio, on Barrel Street." Tony turned so that he could face both Gibbs and Ziva equally. "You remember when McGeek came in on Monday, sounding like death warmed over? He said he'd been working on his novel all week end long, something that we know isn't true because we know where he really was."

"And what does that have to do with this recording studio?" Ziva asked impatiently. "Granted, it would be difficult to be heard outside of the sound-proofed studio, but—"

"Ziva, McGee said that he was trying to figure out how the corpse got into the _pickle_ barrel. Coincidence?"

"Not likely, but—"

Tony wasn't finished. "I handled the crime scene at McGee's apartment. I saw the latest chapter that McHemingway was working on. Boss, there was no mention of a corpse in a pickle barrel."

That was enough for Gibbs. He flipped the sedan into a one-eighty and took off toward Barrel Street in a cloud of dust.

* * *

"McGee!" Abby scolded. "Lie down! Who told you to get up?"

McGee scanned the surroundings, only now realizing that he was neither in the hospital nor in his comfortable apartment. Nothing looked familiar, and the place seemed disturbingly empty of people. He repositioned himself on his elbows. "Where is everyone?"

"Like, they're off to save the world," Abby told him.

"They left me behind?"

"It's not like you're in the best of condition right now, McGee," Abby pointed out. "It's not every day that you get shot."

"Oh. Right." McGee blinked, becoming aware of the white dressing at his midriff. He sank back down onto the sofa, pulling the scant covering up over his bare torso. He swallowed hard, realizing that his throat once again had the texture of brand spanking new sandpaper. "They left me behind."

"Yup. But not before you gave them some really good clues."

"I did? What did I tell them?"

"Six guys, in black ski masks."

"Yeah." McGee paled, remembering.

"You even got a good look at one of 'em, you said. He didn't think you were awake, but you were."

"Wonderful," McGee all but whispered, his throat sending up objections to every syllable. "Gibbs want me to try the facial recognition software?"

"Of course. You feel up to it?"

"Sure," McGee lied, closing his eyes. "Anything else?"

"You remembered that their hideout wasn't too far away from where you live. And railroad tracks," Abby added helpfully.

"I said there were railroad tracks?" That didn't sound right.

"Nope. You said there _weren't_ any. Gibbs was really pleased with that."

"He was?" McGee brightened. Maybe there was yet hope. "He wasn't mad at me?"

"Why should he be mad at you, McGee?"

"Because of all this." McGee waved gingerly at his surroundings, taking in his own damaged condition. "How many NCIS agents get themselves kidnapped?"

"McGee, it's not like you planned this." Abby helped him to lie back against the sofa. "Just relax. Director Shepherd's sending out a team for protection. They should be here in about half an hour, now. They started like thirty minutes ago, and it takes about an hour to get here."

"Protection?" Things were moving entirely too fast for McGee. "Didn't I…?"

"Oh, you did," Abby told him cheerfully. "That's why Ziva shot you."

"She did?" McGee had forgotten that part. "Oh. Right. At the hotel. I think. A lot of stuff is still pretty blurry," he said, trying not to complain.

"What do you remember, McGee?" Abby sat herself on the chair next to him. "Ziva said that you'd remember a lot of stuff, little bit by little bit, and then Gibbs told me to call him with whatever else you remembered. So what do you remember?"

Bewilderment was uppermost. "What have I told you so far?"

"You were pretty clear about getting shanghaied in the garage to your apartment," Abby admitted. "I think we can probably skip over the torture and the screaming."

McGee winced reflexively. "I can go along with that."

"You remember anything more about the guys who snatched you? All guys, right?"

"Yes." McGee remembered that much. "They spoke in a foreign language most of the time; Pashtun, I think. I could be wrong. Certainly it was something Middle Eastern. And some French. Sometimes they spoke a little bit of French."

"Hey, already you're coming up with more stuff," Abby grinned. "What else?"

"I saw that one face."

"We got that. Let's put him aside until we can get you to a computer with facial recognition stuff. What about the others?"

"Two were tall, around six foot," McGee said obediently, trying to remember. "The other four were shorter. All of them were slender, maybe muscular under their shirts. I remember thinking that they were pretty devout; they took breaks for prayers. I didn't see any tattoos, or even any scars on their arms." He tried not to shake.

Abby caught it. "Okay, let's skip over the rest of that part. When did they bring you back to your apartment?"

McGee blinked. "Late. Late Sunday night. They dumped me onto my bed, and doused me with something that put me out." He scowled. "I remember waking up, feeling like someone had run me over, thinking that I'd spent the weekend working on my novel. Hey!" he exclaimed, sitting bolt up right. "Ow!"

Abby helped ease him back onto the sofa. "What, you remembered something else, McGee?"

"Yes," McGee groaned. "I remembered that I was supposed to fix Ducky's computer. Abby, Ducky is going to kill me!"


	14. What?

"You look especially fine this evening, Ali," Ducky observed.

"Thank you, my friend. This will be my last opportunity to persuade the people of this country to invest in mine." Ansarad preened in front of his mirror, adjusting his Western-style tie just so. "This may perhaps be my most important speech, to the leaders of government."

"Yes, it just may be."

There was something in Ducky's tone that alerted Ansarad. He turned away from the mirror. "Donald?"

Dr. Mallard took a moment to decide how to proceed. It wasn't easy. "Why, Ali?"

Ansarad's eyes darted away. The faint outline of a flush sprang to his face. "What do you mean, my friend—"

"Don't insult us both, Ali! The pretense is over!" Ducky tightened his lips. "_You_ are the one who arranged this whole charade! You are the one who determined that Special Agent McGee, a member of _my team_, would be abducted and subjected to unspeakable horrors, his very _life_ ruined, all for your own ends!"

"Donald…"

"How dare you?" Ducky asked bitterly. "How dare you presume upon our friendship in this manner? I am disappointed in you, Ali."

Ansarad didn't pretend not to understand. "I had no other choice, Donald. You must believe me."

"Really? Explain it to me, Ali. Explain to me how killing yourself in a very public venue, placing the blame upon another country and leaving an unborn child behind, killing dozens of innocents while you're at it, is anything less than an act of terrorism."

Ansarad looked away. "No one was supposed to get hurt, except for me."

Ducky grunted, an eloquent expression of disbelief. "Things didn't go as planned. They rarely do, in a scheme this disgraceful."

He gave Ansarad several long moments, the Afghani chief clearly marshalling his thoughts, trying to think of how best to present his case to his friend. Ansarad finally sighed, coming to a decision. "My world is changing, Donald. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes not."

"It is the way of things, Ali."

"Not everyone favors change. I am asking my people to give up customs and traditions that they have lived by for thousands of years. There is history among us, Donald."

"Yours is not the only people with history, Ali," Ducky reminded him, "nor the only people whose traditions have come under siege. The history books are filled with stories of change, both forced as well as desired. And both East and West," he added. "Need I remind you of my own heritage as a Scotsman? We all adapt the best that we are able."

Ansarad couldn't refute the point, and moved on to another. "My death will serve a greater purpose, Donald. It will clear the path for my sons to move us forward. It will send a signal to the elders of my towns that the old ways are dying, and that we must embrace the new."

"And how many people will die for your purpose? For it shall not be only _your_ death, Ali," Ducky growled. "You know your world better than I do. The elders will send their own sons to fight yours. And here, in America, how many of these sons will die trying to save your life? Agent McGee nearly lost his life in your mad scheme. Your own wife lies in a hospital bed, trying not to miscarry your own child!"

"That shouldn't have happened!"

"But it did, Ali! It did!" Ducky stared him down. "Call it off, Ali. Don't put more people in harm's way."

Then the thought struck him. Ducky stared at his host. "This is why you planned for your death here, in America. It wasn't for the purpose of engendering guilt among the American people, that they might increase their aid monies in an attempt to make up for your loss. It was for her, wasn't it?"

Ansarad looked away.

Ducky didn't stop. "She is one of those agents of change, isn't she? You've boasted of how she took on the village elders, and educated the women of the village. Without your protection, she never could have done that. With you gone, they would kill her."

"And my unborn son," Ansarad whispered. He straightened himself, trying for some semblance of dignity. "Here, back in her own country, she would remain to raise my son as an American, with the advantages that such a life could give him. My oldest son would support them, would educate his little brother, and give us a lifeline to the West; a lifeline that we could trust, and my RoseMarie would lead a happy life."

"Just how happy would that life be as a widow?" Ducky snapped. "You underestimate her, Ali—and yourself. You do _everyone_ a disservice by your actions." He moved on to his next point. "Stop the attack, Ali. Save the lives of your people that you persuaded to follow this mad scheme. Don't put the lives of American congressmen at risk; they'll never forgive you."

"They have never been at risk," Ansarad protested. "My people were given strict commands to shoot over people's heads! The politicians will be in no danger."

"When bullets fly, people get hurt," Ducky insisted. "Agent DiNozzo was wounded, saving your life!"

"He should not have interfered!" Ansarad flared back.

"_It was his job!"_ Dr. Mallard slapped his hand on the table, the sound echoing like a gunshot. He got hold of his emotions. "It was a job that _you_ assigned to him, Ali, when you determined that my team and my friends would be your tools."

Ansarad's face darkened. "An accident."

"And was Agent McGee an 'accident'? You may have ruined his life, Ali, even if you never intended to kill him."

"I instructed my people not to instill him with the command to kill himself," Ansarad muttered. "I tried to save his life."

"After first endangering it! I should have known that you were using me from the start," Ducky said angrily. "You _used _our friendship, knowing that I would turn to Special Agent Gibbs and his team to provide your security arrangements. You _deliberately_ selected Agent McGee to undergo your vile torments, even before you received assurances that I would agree to your scheme. What if I had refused, Ali? What if I had declined, and insisted that you maintain your security arrangements with the Secret Service? What then, Ali? What then? What would you have done?"

Ansarad had no answer.

"You would have tortured a man for no purpose, a man that has done you no harm! A man whose only crime was to be one of my teammates! And when your scheme failed, you tried to murder him and make it look like suicide, merely to cover up your disgraceful scheme!"

"What? Murder? Donald, I did no such thing—"

"And what of Officer David?" Ducky interrupted. "She will have to live with the knowledge that she deliberately shot one of her fellow agents."

"An Israeli Mossad—"

"A human being, Ali! A human being, with feelings and emotions as great and as worthy as your own, and with her own nightmares as terrifying as any of yours. Do not diminish yourself by attempting to diminish her, Ali."

"I…"

"And your own wife!" Dr. Mallard went on. "Why, Ali? Why did you try to have her killed? You boasted of her accomplishments—"

"I did not!" Ansarad objected furiously. "Donald, she carries my son! I could not kill her! She… Why do you accuse me of this?"

"Because someone very deliberately took aim at her, Ali." It was clear to Ducky that Ansarad was in the dark on this point. He leaned in. "Her injury was _not_ collateral damage. It was _not_ from a stray bullet, ricocheting across the room. A sniper, located outside a window, fired the bullet that was intended to end her life, hers and the life of her unborn child. Who fired that bullet, Ali? Who tried to kill her?"

Ansarad was shaking, with rage or fear or both, Ducky couldn't tell. "You are certain of this? A sniper?"

"Unquestionably, Ali. The forensics evidence is unmistakable."

Ansarad clenched his fists, and Ducky understood the meaning of the cliché 'white-knuckled with rage'. It was there in front of him.

"Leave me."

"Ali?"

"Leave me, Donald. I have a house to put in order."

* * *

"That was Ducky." Gibbs closed his cell and tucked it away into his pocket. "It's confirmed: Ansarad arranged for his own murder."

Ziva tightened her lips. "That's why I couldn't find any direct link between the Lions of the Desert and here. There was none."

"How about the sniper, boss?" Tony wanted to know. "Did he arrange to kill his own wife? That doesn't seem to fit."

"Nope. Ducky said Ansarad seemed just as shocked as anybody that it wasn't a stray bullet that got the lieutenant." Gibbs grunted. "According to Ducky, Ansarad sure knows something."

"So where do we go from here, boss?" Tony asked.

Gibbs jerked his thumb at the building across the street. "We look for answers—in there."

The sign on the building boasted a large neon pickle, flashing in the early dusk with a fluorescent green tinge. The wording of the sign made it even more clear: Sour Pickles Recording Studio.

* * *

"What was that?" Abby heard something.

"What was what?" McGee didn't want to come out of his half-asleep state.

"I heard something."

"Probably the protection squad that Director Shepherd is sending," McGee said without opening his eyes. Movement meant pain, and pain was something that he'd had entirely too much of for the past several days. McGee wasn't about to move without a very good reason.

That didn't mean that he wouldn't send someone else. "Look out the window," he advised. "See anyone?"

"Nope."

"What?"

"What, what?"

"You heard something," McGee accused. This was too much; he opened his eyes.

"That's what I said, McGee."

"So why do you sound so worried about it?"

"Worried about what?"

"About what you heard. What do you see out there?"

"Nothing. That's the problem. I don't see anything."

"What do you think you heard?"

No answer.

"Abby?" The lack of response made McGee nervous. He hitched himself up onto his elbow, wincing. "Ow. Abby, what do you think you heard?"

The smile that Abby gave him looked sick. "I'm not sure you'll believe me, McGee—"

"Abby—"

"An explosion. Kinda far away, but an explosion." She didn't torture him any more.

"An explosion." This was starting to sound like McGee was going to have to get up. "Not just a tree, falling over in the forest?"

"It could have been."

"But you don't think so." McGee started searching desperately for an alternate method of tracking down the perpetrator of the sound that didn't involve one slightly damaged field agent getting up off of the incredibly comfortable sofa in this very room. "Call the squad that Director Shepherd is sending out. Ask them to check it out, make sure that it's nothing. When are they due to arrive?"

"Five minutes ago. Ten, now."

"Maybe they ran into traffic."

"Out here, McGee? This is an abandoned farm—or at least, it's supposed to look like one. There is no traffic."

"Oh. Right." McGee thought through more options. "Maybe you ought to call Director Shepherd anyway, just to see if something happened. Maybe they got diverted somehow."

"Sounds good to me." Abby turned to get her cell out of her handbag—and did a double-take.

"Abby?"

"I saw something. Out through the window."

"What did you see?" _A deer, maybe? Something equally as non-threatening?_

"I'm not sure."

That did it. Abby could be brilliant, infuriating, obstinate, abstruse and downright irritating, but _wrong_ wasn't in the dictionary. McGee heaved himself to a sitting position, preparatory to standing up.

_Bad move, McGee_. He doubled over, his side telling him in no uncertain terms that even though the bullet had been yanked out of his innards, there was still plenty of healing that needed to occur before the follow up physical would allow him to return to work in any meaningful way. McGee carefully breathed through his mouth, praying that the pain would go away before he fell over onto the floor.

Strong hands grabbed his shoulders. "McGee, what are you doing?"

"Got to…see." He did. If Abby couldn't identify what was outside, then there was an unpleasant possibility that it was something that shouldn't be there. Director Shepherd's protection detail would arrive in a car or two, guns in hand. That would be easy to identify, so clearly the protection detail wasn't what Abby had seen. "Help me up."

"You should be resting," Abby scolded, but she slipped her shoulder underneath his arm to support him.

McGee took a step toward the window, biting back a curse when his knees almost dumped him to the floor. It was a mark of Abby's concern that she wasn't putting him back down onto the sofa, he realized.

"There! Did you see him, McGee?"

"Yes." There was no doubt about it; there was someone out there, someone who was taking pains not to be seen by dodging behind a far off tree. McGee could only claim a brief glimpse, but it was enough. There was someone out there.

This put a new spin on things, and it gave credence to Abby's assertion that she had heard an explosion. It was time to take action. "How many guns did Gibbs leave here, Abby?" _Just in case we need to shoot our way out._

"One. Two."

"Which is it?"

"He left a rifle, McGee." Which Abby could use very well. She wasn't a field agent, but collecting specimens from suspect weapons and breaking those weapons down for identification purposes was something that she did almost daily. "And I have a little Beretta in my handbag."

McGee quirked a smile. "Gibbs know about that one?"

"Uh…no?"

As though Gibbs didn't know everything. McGee couldn't help the small smile. "Full clip?"

"Of course, McGee! What good would it be without ammunition?"

"Just asking, Abby." He pulled her back from the window, incidentally pulling himself back out of the line of fire as well. "Is this the safe house with the bunker in the basement?" It wasn't as though he had been up to noticing when they'd carried him in.

"Yes. You're thinking that we'd better barricade ourselves in?"

"Unless you have a better idea."

"McGee?"

"Yes, Abby?"

"You think they have some bandages in the bunker, or should we stop to pick some up?"

McGee caught a good look at his side and grimaced. The pristine white was marred by red; blood red, to be exact. Then he caught another look outside the window, and out there looked equally as disturbing. There was more than one person, dodging from tree to tree, attempting to sneak up on the safe house undetected. One had already started crawling on his belly across the open field toward the front door. "Maybe we'd better hope that there are some in the bunker."

They hobbled down the hall, stumbling down the steps until they arrived at the door to the bunker, a stiff and thick barrier located at the bottom of the stairs. McGee reached for the doorknob, wincing when it refused to open. "It's stuck. Give me a hand."

Abby tried. She abandoned her job of propping up McGee to use both hands to tug at the bunker door. "McGee, it's _really_ stuck. How do we get in?"

Another sound cracked through the safe house: the sound of the front door being broken.


	15. Gotcha!

Gibbs swiftly assessed his team: Tony DiNozzo was still a hurting puppy. He'd abandoned the sling, but the way that he cradled his arm when he thought no one was looking told the real story. Gibbs squashed his impulse to tell the agent to stay behind; DiNozzo would never forgive him. Not this time. Not when it was _this_ personal.

They should wait. This was the place, there was no doubt about that. The pieces dove-tailed too nicely for them to be wrong. Gibbs had called Director Shepherd, and at the moment a back up squad armed with a search and arrest warrant was on the way. If McGee was right, then there were six of the bastards inside, and only three of the good guys waiting here in this car. Waiting for back up was a good way to avoid putting a bullet into DiNozzo's _other_ arm.

Maybe not. The curtains on the second floor swayed for the third time in as many minutes. Someone inside was looking out. Maybe looking for someone to return to the fold? Or had Gibbs and his team been made? If that were the case, then all six of the bastards would slip away into the dusk, never to be found, and Ali Ansarad and a few more good people would end up dead before the night was over.

Gibbs made his decision. "Ziva, cover the back." That was usually DiNozzo's place, in case someone needed to prevent an unscheduled egress through the back exit. This time, though, DiNozzo was the one that Gibbs was more worried about. This was a job for a man with two good hands, not one who was supposed to be on medical leave. It was only by the grace of God and Jenny Shepherd's selective blindness that Tony DiNozzo was here at all. Gibbs, however, would still back a wounded DiNozzo against any three other agents in all of NCIS. Not that he'd ever tell DiNozzo that. Might give the man a swelled head to go along with a swollen ego.

"On it." Ziva hustled into the dusk, scuttling around the building to check out what the back alley looked like.

Gibbs gave her a ten count, certain that it would be enough time for her to secure the area. If it wasn't, he knew, there would be some noise, something to alert him to a needed delay.

It was time to move in. Gibbs stepped out of the car, DiNozzo in his wake. They walked up the steps to the front entrance, Gibbs scanning the surroundings. No pedestrians; good. Everyone had already left for the night, to contribute to the rapidly dwindling supply of rush hour traffic. The street was bare, because no one wanted to be on _this_ sort of street anywhere close to dark. They positioned themselves to either side of the door. There _shouldn't_ be any bullets flying out at them, but _shouldn't_ wasn't the same as _won't_.

Gibbs tried the door; locked. It couldn't be easy. They'd have to do this the hard way, which was undoubtedly the way that the people inside wanted it. He looked at DiNozzo: ready.

He rapped on the door. "Federal Agents! Open up!"

_That_ set off a scrambling inside. Voices shouted at each other, words that neither Gibbs nor DiNozzo could understand.

Good decision, moving in now. A feminine howl toward the back—was that an actual word that Ziva used?—told them that the people inside had discovered that the back door was blocked by a pissed-off Mossad officer armed with a gun and an attitude. No escape in that direction.

Gibbs used one long leg to kick in the door. The lock, and the surrounding door frame, shattered into a concatenation of splinters and pieces of metal. DiNozzo darted in, gun in both hands, injured arm forgotten under the flood of adrenalin.

Bullets flew out at them. Gibbs shoulder-rolled in, crossing DiNozzo's path and putting up a cross-fire. Quick glance: receptionist desk equaled cover, and Gibbs used it. Caress the trigger; watch a body spin and go down with a howl, clutching his leg. See another sprawl on the floor, courtesy of one highly annoyed one-armed NCIS agent. See the panic increase among the enemy as they realized that they were caught between a rock—Gibbs and DiNozzo—and a hard place—Ziva David.

"Pin 'em down," Gibbs started to say. It would have been the sensible thing to do; terrorists such as these tended to prefer glorious immolations to surrendering peacefully. Keep 'em firing until they ran out of bullets, then take 'em into custody and throw away the key.

These gentlemen, however, never read the rule book.

And they weren't really terrorists.

Surrender made things go _so_ much quicker, Gibbs decided.

* * *

There were four of them, all moving quietly through the safe house. All were dressed in clothing designed to blend in with the dark and to be unremarkable anywhere that they went. This was America, so Western style clothing was used.

"Where are they?" Hissed, in a whisper.

"Living room is clear."

"So is the kitchen. Could they have escaped out through the back door?"

"No—look here. Blood on this door, leading to the basement."

"The agent was wounded. His blood?"

"Probably. The door is locked."

"This is a safe house. We won't be able to get in through that door unless we blast it."

"You're right. Get the explosives, from the car." A short, vicious laugh. "An excellent location—for us. There is no one nearby to hear."

* * *

"Nice work, Jethro." Director Shepherd came to take charge of the scene personally at the Sour Pickles Recording Studio, since the man who just led the assault to bring in six wanted terrorists was technically no longer on the case. Half of Gibbs's field agents were on medical leave and another on 'desk duty' pending the outcome of the investigation of her shooting a fellow NCIS agent. The pencil-pushing side of Director Shepherd wondered just how she was going to slide this through, then inwardly grinned to herself. There was no need to cover this up. The person higher up in the political food chain was Jenny Shepherd herself.

Tony DiNozzo read her mind, and grinned. He put on his best Mel Brooks's imitation: "It's good to be the king."

Jenny gave him a subtle smile. "Go home, Tony. It's over, and you were never here. Understand?" She gestured upward, to where a helicopter had finished disgorging a half dozen men and was now engaged in making sure that no one slipped away into the dark by shining powerful spotlights on the surrounding blocks. "We'll handle it from here."

"Yes, Director." There was mockery there, an attitude worthy of being on Gibbs's team.

Gibbs came to stand by her. "They're pawns, Jenny. Pawns in the political life of Ali Ansarad. Real terrorists would never have surrendered."

"I'm well aware of that, Jethro."

"Ducky says that Ansarad gave them strict instructions not to hurt anyone."

"You believe that?"

"I do."

She raised her eyebrows.

"Not many people got hurt, Jenny, during Ansarad's talks," he told her. "Automatic weapons? They could easily have mowed down an entire crowd of people that first night. It could have been a massacre."

"Tell that to Agent McGee."

"They never expected Officer David to know the Scorpion's Flail," Gibbs pointed out. "Not like it's the most famous brainwashing technique around. They were as surprised as anyone. Hell, you and I never heard of it, Jenny, and look how long we've been in the business. They expected McGee to come out of the whole thing with a few nightmares and nothing more, put the whole thing down to touching the wrong switch by accident."

"How about Lt. RoseMarie Lundquist Ansarad?"

Gibbs darkened. "I don't know."

"And why was Omar Kardez here, sneaking into the country, with an assassination weapon? Don't try to tell me that he accidentally picked up that poison pen from the rental car desk when he arrived in the States, Jethro."

"Not gonna do that, Jenny," he told her, adding, "if I had the answer to that, we've have the rest of the mystery solved." He paused. "Has the protection detail at the safe house touched in yet?"

"I haven't heard one way or the other. Let me check and see." Director Shepherd pulled out her cell and touched the speed dial.

Gibbs didn't wait for his superior to go through the various channels. He had his own, one rather more direct. He hit his own speed dial, one that went straight toward a singular lab rat.

"Hi. If you're getting this message, it's because a) I'm in the middle of an experiment and will get back to you as soon as I'm through, b) I'm at this really cool party and I can't hear the phone ring and I'm thinking that the vibration is just a new variation on a hug that I'm getting from a person I just met or c) I'm avoiding you. In any case, leave a message. Beeeeeep."

The voice mail itself offered its own beep, one rather shorter and more traditional.

"Abby? Gibbs. Call me. Tell me you and McGee are okay, and that the detail has arrived."

He disconnected the call, glaring at the small electronic marvel. Something on the screen caught his eye. "What's this thing?"

Tony looked over his shoulder. "You got a text message, boss. Probably advertising. They're doing a lot of it these days. It oughta be illegal."

"Well, open it, DiNozzo." Gibbs's gut was screaming at him, and it wasn't over an advertising nuisance call.

Tony took the phone and did something mysterious with the buttons. "It's from Abby." His voice changed. "Boss, they're in trouble."


	16. An Elegant Dance of Death

"Not a sound," McGee breathed into Abby's ear. "Not a word."

Abby clamped her lips shut. McGee felt tall and strong next to her, and she knew it for a fallacy. He felt damp, too; blood was seeping out onto his bandages and getting onto her. Abby felt automatically squeamish; blood should be handled with gloves. It was something that had been drilled into her, over and over and over again. Blood meant gloves. End of story. It didn't matter that it was McGee's blood, or that this wasn't her laboratory. It was blood, and it deserved a set of gloves, maybe two.

Abby marshaled her thoughts; this thinking about blood was distracting, and Abby recognized it as her mind's attempt to cope with something too horrible to contemplate. There were men in the safe house, approximately four of them and maybe more, and they had kicked in the door. That, to Abby's way of thinking, pretty well established them as The Bad Guys. The protection detail that Gibbs had sent for would have politely knocked to gain admittance. They knew that Abby Sciutto was the only ambulatory member of the household, and they would have carefully identified themselves before requesting to come in. Heck, with Director Shepherd in charge, she'd probably have made sure that at least one member of the protection detail was already known to Abby by sight. The Director was that kind of person.

Not happening. Door kicked in. Voices that had not grown up in America, talking about explosives and hunting down people. This was _so_ not good. Abby had to do something, something quiet and still effective.

Abby had her cell phone. She pulled it out of her pocket. McGee's eyes widened in instant alarm, but she shook her head at him. _Texting_, she showed him when the little icon appeared on the tiny screen. She could do that silently, and not give away their position to the men who had kicked down the door.

Short, sweet, and to the person she wanted most: Gibbs.

_Help_, she tapped onto the miniature keyboard. _4 men_.

Then she hit 'send'.

A moment later a massive explosion hit the basement bunker door.

Too much. The safe house itself began to collapse.

* * *

_Help. 4 men_.

Gibbs felt as though he'd been kicked in the gut by a mule. It took his breath away.

Not for long. "Ziva!" he bellowed. He needed her, and he needed her now!

"Gibbs?" Ziva came on the run.

"They're in trouble." No need to say who 'they' were.

"I'll get the car—"

"That will take too long." Director Shepherd was paying attention. "I can't get hold of the protection detail, Jethro. Something's happened."

"I need to get out there, Jenny—"

"You'll never get there in time, Jethro. Forty five minutes at least by car—"

"If you've got a better idea, Director—"

"I do." Director Shepherd cut him off. She tapped her comm. link. "NCIS One to Chopper Three."

"Go ahead, NCIS One." The voice was tinny with static, though it came from less than half a mile straight up.

"Got a rush job, Johnny. Got enough fuel for a fast run thirty miles away?"

"Not if I have to detour around Pentagon-restricted air space."

"You won't. Southwest, Johnny."

"You got it, NCIS One. Who do you want picked up?"

"Pick 'em up right here, Johnny, and take 'em to where they tell you. Send down two ropes—"

"Three," DiNozzo interjected firmly.

Director Shepherd eyed him. Tony DiNozzo didn't drop his gaze, giving back as good he got. She nodded. "_Three_ lines, Johnny. Give 'em access to the on board arsenal."

"Will do, NCIS One. Three elevators, coming down."

* * *

The safe house was almost elegant in her dance of death, McGee decided, and still committed to her cause. The scream that came from the man nearest to the explosion suggested that the safe house had revenged herself on at least one attacker. The scream was short, and bubbled away into nothingness, while more voices screeched and cried out in fear and anger.

Sound was the only sense that McGee could use. Sight did him no good in his hiding place, and touch and smell only reminded him that his fellow prey was right next to him. Perfume? Maybe, maybe not. He didn't think that Abby used perfume when she was in the lab; too much chance that it would interfere with some forensic test she was running. What McGee ought to be smelling was the scent of fear, and of sweat.

He could hear her breathing, and found comfort that she was still alive. How long that would last was problematic. It all depended on how long it took for the terrorists to find them. Despite the death and/or injury of one of the attackers, the others would try to complete the mission. Whatever goal they had in their little pea-brains, it still contained the ultimate mission of making certain that McGee and/or Abby no longer inhabited the land of the living.

Great. He supposed that they could go out in a blaze of glory. They did, after all, have two weapons. Well…one-and-a-half. Abby's little Beretta might seriously tickle someone if aimed in exactly the right spot.

Abby had already sent a text message to Gibbs, and—wonder of wonders!—Gibbs had texted her back. McGee stifled a snort. _Someone_ had texted Abby back, and had used Gibbs's cell phone to do it. Gibbs do something as technologically sophisticated as texting? Not in this lifetime, which, given both the way McGee felt and the thoroughness that the terrorists were sifting through the shifting rubble, wasn't likely to be particularly long.

The safe house dance of death; it was still going on, McGee decided. The house was still doing its job of protecting the people it was assigned to protect, and would continue to do so until it was a pile of splinters and concrete dust. Three of the four terrorists cursed as they tossed this chunk and that out of their way, delving deeper into the bunker built into the basement of the old house. McGee heard another beam gave way, nearly bashing in a very deserving head. Unfortunately for McGee and Abby, the beam missed and only glanced off the man's shoulder. There were curses, but no real damage.

Could they last until Gibbs got here with reinforcements?

It was times like this when McGee wished that he was less of a pessimist.

* * *

Gibbs stared into the night. Once the decision that night had fallen was made, the sun finished descending swiftly behind the mountains, leaving the valley bathed in darkness with vision a thing of the past.

Or so it should have been. Special Agent Gibbs, once invited, had made liberal use of the on-board arsenal in the back of the chopper, and had found a pair of night goggles. He scanned the territory: the safe house, he knew, was alone in the terrain with a good mile or two between it and any other man-made structure. The lines of red-tailed cars traveling along the road they had left behind held no interest for him. No, what was of far greater interest was the red blob that lay nearly over the horizon, a blob that they were rapidly approaching.

Not fast enough for Gibbs's peace of mind, though still faster than what he could have done by car. Nothing could have been fast enough: for Abby to text him with her 'help' message was the equivalent of a full-fledged scream of terror. Abby wasn't one to cry wolf, not under these circumstances.

And what the hell had happened to the protection detail? Even if they'd gotten lost, Director Shepherd still could have gotten hold of them—

_Crap_.

It was the red blob. A dying crimson blur lay on the road, a blur that resolved itself into something that looked like the twisted remnants of a large SUV with the heat swiftly escaping into the ambient air. Gibbs had seen other things that looked just like that: the aftermath of a roadside bomb. He interpreted it swiftly: someone had anticipated the detail, and had prepared an explosive surprise for them.

This wasn't anything that Ansarad had set up, Gibbs decided grimly. Ansarad had given instructions to minimize the damage to others as he tried to go out in his own personal blaze of martyrdom. It was only due to the diligence of Gibbs's team that the Afghani chief hadn't succeeded. This, however, bore none of that. This was a group of terrorists—and Gibbs used the term with all the horror that it deserved—this was a group that believed that the death of even one American agent was a goal worthy of consideration. The ruins of the vehicle below was proof of that.

Abby and McGee were their targets.

Gibbs silently urged the helicopter to move more swiftly through the night, and began to consider very real assault tactics. He scanned his team: Ziva had that set look on her face that screamed 'I don't care'. Gibbs knew it for a façade, and a useful one; Ziva was putting away her emotions for the foreseeable future in order to more efficiently carry out her task. If she were to really consider the implications of what was happening at the safe house, she would be crying in rage and fear.

DiNozzo was still buckled into his seat, eyes closed. Gibbs could see the lines of pain on his face. The sling was gone but the hole in his arm was not, and Gibbs felt guilty that the man was even here. He should have sent the man directly home to recuperate, not used him at Headquarters to delve further into this mystery. DiNozzo had insisted on coming along; was he up to what was needed?

As if he'd read Gibbs's mind, Tony opened his eyes and stared at Gibbs. _Try to stop me, boss._

One more thing to toss at the man. "You ever jump a 'chute, DiNozzo?"

_Almost_ stopped him. "We're not going down the same way we came up, on ropes?"

Gibbs grinned, a wolfish baring of teeth that promised retribution for the people who had taken out the protection detail. There was no humor in it. "No, DiNozzo, we're not. That would be too noisy, and we need the element of surprise." He glanced away, considering. "You're riding down with me. We'll double up; I'm not having a man with a busted wing land solo." That would do for an excuse not to have the man jump alone and break a leg. "Ziva, you up for this?"

"I am." The Mossad officer had already selected her parachute from the stash in the back of the chopper and was buckling it on. "Make it a short jump, Gibbs. We need to be on the ground swiftly."

Gibbs nodded, and shouted to the pilot. "Five minutes, Johnny?"

"Three, now."

Gibbs turned back to DiNozzo. "You still in contact with Abby?"

"Just heard back. They're still alive, boss."

"Good. Let's try and keep 'em that way."

* * *

Abby showed him the latest text that came from Gibbs's cell: _5 min_. McGee tried for a smile to comfort her, sincerely doubting whether she could see it. It was dark, and even the light from the cell might give away their position. Still, it was good to know that Gibbs and the others weren't far off.

Still, five minutes was a very long time when the opposition was looking through the collapsed safe house to make certain that the two target bodies within were bodies that weren't breathing. It wouldn't take more than a second or two to put a couple of bullets through the backs of their heads. All it would take was the glimpse of something suspicious, and there would be nothing that McGee or Abby could do about it. Even bringing the rifle around into position to be fired wouldn't help; McGee and Abby would be dead before they could fire a single shot.

No help for it; they would have to simply stay put and hope that the terrorists didn't find them in the next five minutes. McGee strained his ears, hoping to hear the roar of an engine that signified Gibbs's arrival. The safe house itself was still doing its job: picking through the rubble was turning into more of a chore than any of the terrorists had imagined. Another bore a damaged arm, courtesy of a falling china cabinet. With luck, an entire floor would collapse and would take out the rest.

_Be careful what you wish for, McGee_. The line ran swiftly through McGee's mind in tune with the sudden upswell of creaks that the safe house emitted. Crying in pain, McGee thought wildly, as though the end was near…

The top floor of the safe house collapsed onto the floor beneath, and the whole structure gave way. The shrieks from the terrorists were vengeful music to McGee's ears.

McGee flung himself over Abby. They were about to be flattened, and there was no protection, not from this. The only satisfaction that he would get would be that the terrorists wouldn't live to terrorize anyone else…


	17. Devastation

If it weren't for the sheer terror, floating down through the night would be almost peaceful. If it weren't for the hole in his arm saying, _are you crazy for doing this???,_ Tony DiNozzo would almost tell the world that he was enjoying himself.

He wasn't. Enjoying himself, that is. He was strapped to his boss, a huge chute billowed out overhead, with the ground rushing toward them. Maybe not rushing—their descent was chute-controlled—but it was still fast enough that Tony didn't want to contemplate what the landing would be like without Gibbs to break his fall.

Not fair. Ziva didn't require a baby-sitter for parachuting down into the night. Tony could have done this. He'd done it before; he wasn't a novice. So he'd gotten pushed to get his butt out of the plane the last time—which was also his first and only time. This time would have been different.

The landing changed his mind. Gibbs stuck the landing like a pro—which he was—feet shoulder-width apart in the approved stance, spilling the air out of the chute with practiced ease, unsnapping Tony so that his second in command could grab his own arm in an attempt to batter down the sharp stinging that the landing had produced.

Gibbs detached the lines. "You okay, DiNozzo?"

"Just dandy," Tony pushed out through grated teeth. "Let's go get 'em."

Gibbs stared at him just long enough for Tony to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gibbs was having second thoughts about letting him come on this rescue mission. Tony straightened himself up, banishing all thoughts of pain. He pulled his handgun out, deliberately using his wounded arm. "Let's go."

Not fooled, but that wasn't the point. DiNozzo wasn't going to get left behind like somebody's bratty kid brother. Gibbs tightened his lips, then jerked his head toward their target.

It used to be the safe house. It used to have dilapidated clapboard siding, with windows dotting each side of the house. There used to be a garage attached to the side of the house with an entrance leading from that garage into the kitchen. DiNozzo knew that it had all existed because he had been here, in this safe house, only a few hours previously.

Now it was rubble.

DiNozzo watched Gibbs scan the scene through the infra-red goggles, looking for hot spots, anything that might suggest a living body—or recently living body—lay beneath the thick beams. "Boss?"

A tightening of the lips told DiNozzo that nothing was coming clear, infra-red or no.

This was still a potential battlefield. Broken wires sparked here and there, sending off random flashes of light that illuminated nothing worthwhile. A thick beam of wood groaned off to the left as it struggled to stay intact underneath the remnants of the upper floor bathtub. It was a mess—

An arm. It was an arm, sticking out of something that looked like it used to be a wall in the parlor. It was an arm with a hand still curled around a handgun.

Gibbs spotted it at the same time, and went stiff. Hand gestures: _Ziva, cross around to the right. DiNozzo, cover the left_. Gibbs himself advanced, footsteps cat-quiet, sneaking up in case the arm was attached to something able to defend itself.

It wasn't. The arm wasn't attached to anything. It had been blown off of the rest of body that it used to belong to, a body that was likely somewhere underneath another part of the destroyed safe house. Ziva kicked the gun out of the cooling fingers, preventing any post-mortem twitches from triggering a shot.

Gibbs pulled off the night goggles, tugging a small but powerful flashlight from his pocket. "Too much heat from the explosion," he grunted by way of an explanation. "Anybody see anything?"

Actually, there was too much to see, was Tony's private thought. Too many broken things to look at. The dark cushion over there: it had been part of the overstuffed chair that Tony himself had sat on, watching McGee snore. The broken back to a kitchen chair was what they had tied the man to when they'd deliberately recreated his torture in an effort to help him remember everything that had been done to him. That sink over there—well, no, that one Tony didn't actually remember. It could equally be from the kitchen or the upstairs bath.

Something creaked on the far side of the damage, a beam shifting. A few clatters more suggested that additional detritus had moved a bit closer to the ground. A wafting of dust passed his nose, and he stifled a sneeze.

No one could live through this, Tony thought grimly. The place looked like the aftermath of a tornado, and the body parts suggested just as much damage. Someone had put a little too much explosive in the hole in an attempt to pry out two members of NCIS, and had paid for their mistake with their lives.

On the other hand…Tony stiffened. This was a safe house, a safe house with a bunker designed to withstand anything short of a Tomahawk missile. Abby had been texting the boss, so they had obviously had notice that disaster was approaching. Abby would have pulled McGeezer into the basement bunker and locked it behind her. Now the only question was: was the explosive powerful enough to compare to a Tomahawk missile?

Gibbs had apparently come to the same conclusion independently. "Dig in," he ordered tersely. "Look for the entrance to the bunker. DiNozzo, you getting anything more from Abby?"

Tony checked the cell phone that he'd confiscated from his tech-challenged superior. "No, boss."

"Keep trying." Gibbs grabbed a large beam with a jagged end where it had been ripped away from a floor joist and wrestled it out of the way. "Call it in. We're going to need heavy equipment, to move this mess."

They found two more bodies, both dead from the explosion. Only one still had a face, and that face was one that Tony would see in his nightmares for a very long time. It made him grateful that the other had no face to be seen. Ziva located a semi-automatic—"Russian make," she sniffed, "for the black market. Poor quality."—and set it aside for the Forensics circus that would surely follow in the days to come. Tony identified the blackened hulk of a framed picture that had graced the front hall, its subject covered with soot, twisted around the leg of a table.

Gibbs worked with methodical grimness. He could have been sanding the ribs of his basement boat, for all anyone could see, pushing and pulling at the broken ribs of the house, searching for the entrance to the bunker. That bunker, Tony knew, would be the only place that Abby and McGee could have survived.

They _could_ have. The pair _could_ have lived through the explosion, protected by the concrete walls of the bunker. It was why the bunker had been built into the safe house to begin with, so that when things like this happened, NCIS teams didn't get holes in them from missing members. Those members survived, and Tony would be able to torment McGeek yet again. He'd be able to take the elevator downstairs to the Forensics Lab and watch Abby work her magic that would give them the clue they needed to haul in the alleged perpetrator.

He was babbling. Tony recognized that, and was grateful that his mouth hadn't participated to let the noises out where Gibbs and Ziva could hear them. Tony grabbed onto another stray piece of broken furniture, fiercely ignoring the sudden stab of pain in his arm, and tossed it out of the way. It was only right that he should hurt. It was a fitting memorial for—

He cut that thought off sharply. Abby and McGee were _not_ dead, were _not_ crushed under the slabs of concrete that made up the bunker to this safe house. If they were, then Gibbs wouldn't be working so hard and so fast to rescue them. That would be a salvage operation, and Gibbs would be taking his time. Gibbs, however, was grabbing onto this and that, making a dent into the mound of destruction that prevented them from getting to the subterranean bunker, heedless of the damage to his hands. Gibbs's gut told him that his two lost lambs were still alive, and Tony clung to that hope like a drowning man to a life preserver. Gibbs was never wrong. Tony chanted it under his breath like a mantra. Gibbs was never wrong.

Well…hardly ever.

The cell rang, its small sound sharp and clear in the awful silence. Tony fumbled in his haste to click it open.

"It's Abby!" he called out. "They're still alive!"

"Tell her we're coming to get them. What is she saying?" Gibbs paused in his efforts.

"Just to hurry, boss. Nothing more."

That wasn't like Abby. Even texting, the lab rat tended to burble, using twice as many words as everyone else to transmit the same information. She was in trouble, along with McGee. Tony knew it, Gibbs knew it, and Ziva knew it. The trio plunged into their work with renewed effort, searching for the entrance to the bunker of the safe house.

"Here!" Ziva called out. "It's here!"

She was right. The door to the bunker was still intact, soot-blackened around the edges but still performing its primary function of deterring entrance to those on the outside. Gibbs played the flash around the edges.

"Look." Tony caught it first: the red outline of a hand slapped against the upper panel of the door to the bunker. "You think that's McGee's?"

"You think maybe we should wait to run some prints, DiNozzo?" The sarcasm covered up the worry.

Gibbs put his back into it, seizing onto the handle and hauling away. It didn't come; didn't open up. "Locked," he grunted.

"We can perhaps pick the lock?" Ziva moved in, trying her own luck for a full two minutes before knowing herself to be defeated. "It is not the lock that is keeping the door from being opened. I think the lock or perhaps the door frame itself has been damaged by the explosion."

"We need a pry bar." Tony looked around at the debris, wondering what might still have the strength to fit the need. It would have to have a slender edge, something to pry into the crack between the door and the rest of the safe house bunker. There was precious little. The remnants of the house creaked and moaned, threatening to crunch them under the weight of the falling structure. Most was already on the ground but there were still enough beams left to suggest that the fake farmhouse had more than one story.

There: one of the steel reinforcements had shuddered loose from its concrete clothing and lay twisted on the ground, ready for use. Tony pounced on it. "Let's try this."

He inserted the edge into the crack, feeling the others' eyes on his back, watching and ready to jump forward just as soon as the door was open. He leaned on the steel rod, feeling the door start to give.

"It's opening, Tony. Keep going."

A little more weight, a little more force. Tony wedged his feet against something immovable, using it to apply more power. A fulcrum, something inside his brain chanted, worried that it was his fourth grade teacher, what was her name? Never mind; it didn't matter. What did matter was that the crack was widening—

_Bam!_

The steel rod snapped in two, sending Tony toppling to the ground with a curse.

"You all right, DiNozzo?"

"Yeah, just fine," Tony said ruefully, picking himself up. Battersby, that was her name. His fourth grade school teacher. It used to be Jimenez, but then she got married, right in the middle of the school year, and they all had to get used to her new name. "Did I get it open?"

"Not quite, DiNozzo." Gibbs peered at the wedge in the bunker door, using his flash to examine the opening. He put his face to the opening. "Abby! McGee!"

The sounds echoed in the bunker, a ghost of a noise. Nothing came back in response.

"Perhaps they cannot answer?" Ziva tried to put a good face on it.

"Maybe." Gibbs picked up another steel rod, almost a twin to the one that Tony had used, and inserted it. He got a better grip, repositioned the rod for more force, and leaned.

The door protested, and slowly widened. Ziva added her own strength, hauling on a spare portion of the rod, and together they forced the door open enough for Ziva to slip in.

She wasted no time. "Abby! McGee!" she shouted, sliding through the narrow opening. "Gibbs, one side of the bunker has been crushed. I can't get to it. And I don't see anything that looks like either McGee or Abby."

"You think they're there, boss?" If they were, Tony thought, it would take bulldozers and a dozen men to get them out. Too late? Better not be. They couldn't be dead, flattened to a pancake underneath that mess. Tony had proof: Abby had texted him just moments ago.

"Unless you can think of a more likely place, DiNozzo—" Gibbs broke off.

"Gibbs?"

Gibbs's eyes steeled over. "They aren't in there."

"What do you mean?" Ziva put her face to the opening to peer out at them. "Those jackals were out to kill them. They would have gone to the bunker for safety."

"Right." Not something that Gibbs was going to argue. "But what if, for some reason, they couldn't get there?" Then he hit them with the big puzzle piece: "Those texts from Abby. Wasn't McGee telling me just last week about how they can't get through steel walls, and that's why cell phones don't always work everywhere? So how the hell are we getting those texts through these bunker walls?"

* * *

One thing she was not was cold. She was not cold. Well, maybe she was, but it wasn't the 'gee, it's frosty outside' sort of cold. It was the sort of cold that people got when they came down with a fever, except that she didn't have a fever, not that she knew of. It was more likely the early stages of shock. That happened during a heavy duty injury: the major vessels carrying blood dilated, letting the pressure inside drop, which made it real difficult for the heart to pump blood fast enough to keep the brain going. Vision was the first to go, and that seemed to be happening right now. Sure, it was dark where she was, but somehow Abby didn't think that that was the reason that she wasn't seeing so well.

Great. Sometimes it was a real bitch, knowing so much about how people died.

McGee was a dead weight across her torso. Oops, maybe she oughtn't to use the word 'dead'. Might give him ideas. Ideas that she really didn't want him to have. Abby giggled, realizing that she had little to no control over what she was thinking, which led her back to the unwelcome concept of 'shock'.

Where was Gibbs? Her boss always showed up when she needed him. It was like a psychic bond between them: she came up with something really really good, and he would be magically drawn to her lab. It wasn't anything scientific, but there was such a thing as inductive reasoning. If something happened over and over again, it stood to reason that it would continue to happen over and over again.

Well, she really _really_ needed him now. She needed him like an hour ago, when all hell was breaking loose. Like when those guys were blowing up the bunker, and then the safe house collapsed around them. She supposed that they were lucky that they weren't killed right then and there.

She almost had been. The ceiling had been coming down right at them. McGee had seen it, had yelled something incomprehensible, and had flung himself over her in an attempt to protect her from the 'sky is falling' stuff.

It had worked. She was alive. Him? Maybe, maybe not. McGee wasn't talking, wasn't moving. On the other hand, he wasn't cold. Bodies tended to cool off at the rate of one degree per hour, so on the third hand maybe he hadn't been dead long enough to start to feel cold. She giggled again. Three hands? This was starting to sound like one of Ducky's wackier cases, the kind that came with nut jobs attached. The kind where the autopsies turned into circuses, and Gibbs would show up at Ducky's side, just like he did for Abby. Only when Ducky got to them, the bodies would usually have cooled to room temperature, and would feel pretty cold. Abby never liked that sensation, and she hoped that the body on top of hers wasn't headed in that direction.

It really was a bitch, knowing how people died.

_Gibbs! Please come get me!_


	18. One Chance

"Abby!"

"McGee!"

The shouts rang out into the night. The trio of NCIS agents picked through the rubble, desperately searching for their comrades. Only Gibbs had a flashlight on him, though the full moon made it almost superfluous.

Tony picked up something that looked suspiciously like the remnants of a kitchen chair and flung it away. "Could they have left the building before it collapsed?"

"Ya think, DiNozzo?" Gibbs broke off suddenly, surveying the mess around him.

Both Ziva and Tony recognized the signs. "Boss?"

"Be quiet, Tony," Ziva hissed, watching her superior closely. _Let him think_.

Gibbs retraced his steps back to the bunker door. The massive plate steel hung on ruined hinges, and creaked when a stray breeze rustled the nearby frame. The safe house hadn't finished collapsing, he realized. There was still some damage that could be done, which meant that he needed to solve this mystery and find his people _pronto_.

Hand print on the door. That was the key. The print was about the size of McGee's hand, and Gibbs didn't need a DNA match to know that it belonged to his junior agent. More to the point, the hand print was on the _outside_ of the door, not the inside.

Gibbs put himself into the mind of his subordinate. McGee was wounded and weak, but not stupid. He knew the score, knew that if those approaching bastards got in, they'd kill the pair of them without a second thought. What would McGee do? They'd head for the bunker in the basement. Once inside, it would take more explosives than those goons had brought to pry them out, and by then the protection detail that Jenny Shepherd had sent would arrive to bail them out.

That hadn't happened. Why not?

Not pertinent. The fact was, it hadn't happened. The door could have been locked, and nobody realized it until after Gibbs and company had left. Maybe something got stuck; Abby and McGee couldn't get the door open in order to enter the bunker. The point was that McGee and Abby weren't inside. The hand print was on the _outside_ of the bunker door, not the inside.

It was a distraction, and it had worked. It made the assassins believe that Abby and McGee were inside the bunker, and that they'd have to work to pry them out. It was a delaying tactic, and it had worked.

It just hadn't worked quite the way anyone had thought it would. Someone hadn't done a good job of figuring out how much explosive was needed, and brought the rest of the house down around everyone's ears. He couldn't help himself; Gibbs was viciously glad that some of the assassins' own people had gotten themselves caught in the collapse. _Served 'em right_.

Conclusion: Abby and McGee were not in the bunker when the safe house collapsed. Where would they be? McGee wasn't going very far very fast, not in his condition, and Abby wasn't about to leave him behind just to save her own skin. Gibbs sniffed the air, not that it would give him any concrete information about the whereabouts of his little lost lambs but it would provide extra oxygen to his brain to help him think.

Outside the safe house? Possible, not likely. The trees were a good hundred yards away, just right for someone to take a quick couple of shots and drop a pair of fleeing NCIS employees. No, McGee would rule that out quick. That meant that they were somewhere inside the house when the explosives went off and turned this quagmire into a no-holds-barred catastrophe.

Gibbs went back to his memories of this safe house. The bunker was in the basement, and he could use that as a starting point. _Abby and McGee get there, scared and hurting, and can't get in. What do they do? Abby tries not to panic. McGee tries to think. Where can they hide?_ Gibbs let his mind do a three-sixty around the area, discarding all the inadequate possibilities for a hiding place. Abby and McGee would have re-ascended the staircase from the basement bunker, and would then would have had to hustle because the terrorists were coming in through the door. What was at the top of the basement staircase? Gibbs turned around, seeing in his mind's eye the staircase opening onto the hallway that led to the kitchen and the living room on the main level. From the kitchen, he remembered, they could get into the garage. Had they gone there? Not a chance; the garage was now a pancake. If Abby and McGee had been in the garage, they'd be dead. There'd be no texting from his little lab rat.

The garage was out. Both the kitchen and the living room were unrealistic; those were the first places that the terrorists would look, and McGee knew that. McGee wouldn't let them hide there.

That left upstairs. There were bedrooms upstairs, with beds and closets and furniture, and it was as far away from the terrorists as they could get. The terrorists would search the main floor first, and then be led to the bunker in the basement. Any intelligent human being would assume that Abby and McGee had barricaded themselves in the bunker to wait for a rescue, hoping that the protection team would arrive before the terrorists realized their error. The top floor would be a distant third option for anyone reasonable to consider. It would give Abby and McGee the longest possible chance for a rescue.

It would have worked, except for two things: one, the terrorists had taken out the protection detail before they ever got to the safe house and two, someone had been a little too enthusiastic with the dynamite.

However, it did give Gibbs and his two a place to start. "Look for 'em in the bedroom areas," he growled, placing his feet among the debris, trying to keep from sliding off of the clutter tossed there by the explosives. "DiNozzo, try to get Abby to text you. Try to find out which bedroom they went for."

"Got it, boss."

Neither Tony nor Ziva questioned him. Neither of them made mention of the fact that each of the three upstairs bedrooms now had a height ranging somewhere between twelve inches and three feet, depending on the condition of the furniture holding up the roof. What mattered was that they now had a direction to explore, and a hint that at least one of their team was still alive.

They would find them, come hell or high water.

* * *

"McGee?"

It would be really really nice if the computer geek would say something. Anything. Really. Just something to reassure her that she wasn't all alone in this bubble of hell.

Not much of Abby worked anymore, only one hand. Fortunately, it was the hand that held the cell phone. That was the good part. The bad part was that the arm that the hand was attached to was trapped underneath McGee. She couldn't see it, not that it would make much difference because her eyes weren't working particularly well, either.

_Abby, you're a right mess, you are._

_Damn right._

_I'm talking to myself._

_There isn't anyone else to talk to. McGee isn't saying anything._

_Oh. I guess that's all right, then. Talk away._

She heard noises outside, sounds that suggested that someone was trying to get in. _Crap! They've discovered that we're not in the bunker!_ She went cold. _What are we supposed to do now? Where's Gibbs? Does he even know that we're in trouble? He must; he's Gibbs!_

Defense. That was normally the field agents' job, but the only field agent present was the unconscious one lying across her chest. She'd be scolding him for conduct unbecoming an agent and a gentleman if he could hear her. If he could hear, McGee would then stammer something about protecting civilians and how he was sorry if he had embarrassed her when really McGee would be the one with a severe case of humiliation to be caught with his head right between her…

Defense. Abby yanked her thoughts back to where they needed to be. How was she supposed to defend them both when she only had one hand available for operation, and the attached arm was pinned beneath some two hundred pounds of field agent? She couldn't even throw something at them; her arm wasn't available to provide any throwing power. Was there anything thing she could do?

There was something hard, just within reach of her fingers, something with the tensile strength of metal. It was cold, like metal, warmed to the temperature of the flesh surrounding it. It had a short, cylindrical barrel, with a smooth handle, a couple of protrusions—the Beretta! It was the tiny handgun that she'd brought. Sure, it had about as much firepower as a kid's popgun, but they wouldn't know that, not at first. All they would know is that Abigail Sciutto was armed and dangerous.

She would have to make it count. She would have the element of surprise, but only once. She could get off one shot, and then it would be over. She'd better make it count.

Right. How the hell was she supposed to do that, when it was dark and her eyes weren't working and where the _hell_ was Gibbs? Abby felt the tears spring to her eyes, tears of frustration and fear and…and…

Closer. Something heavy rattled; something got lifted away. A shaft of light pierced the darkness, not that it made much of a difference. She wasn't seeing particularly well through the tears.

One chance. Abby chanted that to herself like a mantra. She wrestled her hand out from under McGee's lifeless body, positioning the little Beretta the best that she could. One shot, one chance. They'd be dead after that. If she was lucky, she'd take one of the bad guys with her. She could do that. She might not be a field agent, but she was _Gibbs's_ lab rat and she'd do him proud.

One chance. She waited. It had to be the right moment. She waited.

A shadow appeared. It cut off the shaft of moonlight.

She fired.


	19. Motivation

The bullet whizzed by his ear, and only sheer instinctual reflex kept Gibbs from acquiring another hole in his head.

"Abby!" he yelled.

There was silence. Then—

"Gibbs?"

Weak. Broken. _Alive_.

Nothing mattered beyond that. _Alive!_

"Abby!" he roared. "Abby, it's Gibbs! Put down the damn gun!"

Silence.

Worrisome silence.

"Abby? You hear me?"

"Gibbs." As though it was almost too much effort to speak.

It could be. His lab rat could be dying while he wasted time. She could be passing out right now—or she could be readying another shot from that damn Beretta in an injury-induced hallucination.

Gibbs was going to find out, and there was only one way to do it. Motioning the other two to the side and out of the way, he took hold of another chunk of debris—it happened to be the bedroom door, twisted and torn—and hauled it back.

No shot.

Nothing.

Nothing except a pile of broken furniture, shoved into a disheveled pile by an explosion in the not too distant past. Nothing except a heavy chest of drawers, the top two drawers half out and in splinters, lying on top of a bed frame with the mattress askew, all flopped onto the floor because the legs to the bed frame weren't sturdy enough to hold up the frame, the chest of drawers, and the roof top.

Nothing except a small hand sticking out from underneath the bed, a Beretta drooping from it.

* * *

_Gibbs, is that you?_

"Abby, I'm coming. Hang in there, Abbs."

_No rush. Nothing hurts. Not anymore._

"Grab that end of the armoire, Ziva. DiNozzo, back up. You want this thing to land on your foot?"

Something heavy lifted itself off of her. Someone cried out in sudden pain, someone female.

_Crap, that was me!_

"Careful, dammit!"

_It's all a matter of physics, Gibbs. You compute your strength, and Ziva's, and Tony's, and you figure out if you're strong enough to lift off the roof to the house._

_Oh, wait. You must have already done that, 'cause you were working on the chest of drawers just now. Whoa—pretty strong there, Gibbs. You must be motivated_.

"Watch it! Ease up, DiNozzo. Grab the end of bed frame, there—no, hold it! Hold it!"

"Damn! Look at that splinter. It's practically staked McGee like a vampire!"

"Not quite, Tony. McGee's shoulder blade deflected it. Abby was lucky; if he had not been there, it would have pierced her chest. We must be careful as we lift the frame off of them."

"Now _that's_ a concept that she'd like." Muttered. "Done in with a stake through her heart."

"Make sure that he doesn't bleed out on us." That was Gibbs. "DiNozzo, grab something to staunch the bleeding. Ziva, get the other side of the bed frame. Let's get it off them. How soon before help arrives?"

"Should be here any minute, boss."

"Get the Beretta away from her hand, in case she comes to."

"Got it."

_Feeling lighter now, Gibbs. You finished with the bed frame? Oh, yeah; I hear it crashing over to the side of what used to be this bedroom. It was pretty, Gibbs. The bedroom, I mean. It was blue, with white curtains. Did you see the curtains? Or are they all black now, with soot from the explosive?_

"He's not bleeding too badly, boss. Glancing blow."

"Get him off Abby."

"Look at where his face is."

"This is not the time for jokes, Tony."

"Not any fun unless he can hear 'em."

_Are you worried about McGee, Tony? You sound like it_.

"I hear a siren, in the distance. Perhaps two kilometers away."

"Tell 'em to hurry."

_Those your arms, Gibbs? Like I said, you're pretty strong when you're motivated_.

_They feel pretty good_.

* * *

He lifted her up, hoisting her out of the debris, carefully picking his steps out of the ruins of the safe house. "Abby? Tell me you're all right."

She smiled at him, a crooked smile with eyes closed. She nestled her head into his shoulder.

"I knew you'd come."


	20. Final Twist

The venue for the third and last of Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad's speeches had been changed in deference to security concerns. Instead of the Willard Hotel, three blocks from the White House, it was a smaller and more squat building that in common times served as headquarters for the National Organization for States' Equality and now—for a substantial fee through the NOSE—had been re-outfitted for a smaller dinner. Members of Congress, eager to hear about conditions in Afghanistan from one of its more prominent leaders, strolled in with studied patience, jockeyed for position, ready to greet the man of the hour. Not all of them; some, well aware of the fireworks surrounding Ansarad's first efforts, chose to give the rubber chicken a miss. Only the politicians with a lower recognition factor had a reason to brave the odds, hoping to score points with someone back home in exchange for the opportunity to get their heads blown off. Not one had a face that the general public knew.

The caravan of limos eased to a stop in front of the building. The first was security; a trio of Marines, grim in dress uniforms and with firearms not in keeping with their ceremonial appearance, stepped out and scanned the area before allowing the inhabitants of the second limo to emerge.

Ali Abu Hakseem Ansarad stepped out of the second limo, stretching slightly as he scanned the entrance to the new venue. It was not as elegant as the Willard Hotel would have been but the added defensibility was worth the change. He strolled through the double line of the honor guard, greeting this congressman and that, exchanging pleasantries with them and shaking hands, his bodyguard Chelid unobtrusively at his side. Dr. Mallard, himself resplendent in a tuxedo, followed.

The third limo disgorged its own occupant, a woman carefully veiled that she not offend her own sensibilities. She trailed after Ansarad, smiling behind her veil, acknowledging her husband's supporters.

Director Shepherd exited the third limo that she'd shared with Nadya Ansarad, speaking into her earpiece, reflexively scanning the territory for signs of impending mayhem. "All have entered the facility, and we are still go. I repeat, we are a go." She trailed after the dignitaries, still watching. "It's looking good, all. Pull back out of entrance; let's not make our presence obvious. Just leave one person to watch the street, with everyone else inside."

The hall had been made festive with signs in both English and Pashtun, hoping for new alliances across global borders and promoting increased commerce for all. Waiters in tails were already offering tidbits on silver trays, tall flutes of bubbling champagne. Glasses clinked above the susurrus of gentle conversation.

There were few women. Aside from Mrs. Ansarad, Director Shepherd had made an appearance, her concession to the night that her tailored suit was of silk and hampered her movements not at all. Her eyes continually scanned the crowd and sometimes went unfocussed, listening to the chatter in her earpiece. There was a single congresswoman, hair gray and swept up into an elegant coif. She too moved easily through the crowd, conferring with her colleagues, preferring to wear a pantsuit that showed an amazing figure for a woman of her apparent age. There were no others.

It was time. The participants were ushered to their seats by the tinkling of a gentle bell, and Ali Ansarad took his place on the stage, accompanied by his wife and his honored guest, Dr. Mallard. His bodyguard, Chelid, remained never far from his side. "My friends," Ali began, smiling benevolently at his audience.

The commotion barely had time to register on the senses before almost a dozen men in black ski masks burst into the hall, waving automatic weapons. Gunfire rang out, aimed at the stage, aimed at Ansarad.

The bullets soared high above the heads on the stage, badly aimed. Nevertheless Chelid couldn't help his reflexes; he took Ansarad down behind the podium. More bullets smashed into the fake wood of the structure, splinters flying into the air. Mrs. Ansarad screamed, dropping to the floor of the stage with her hands over her head.

There had been two sets of Marines, sharp in their dress uniforms, aligned to either side of the entranceway. Not any longer; they merged to form a barrier, M-16s pointed and ready. The terrorists wouldn't be leaving this time!

Every single 'congressional representative' present pulled out their own NCIS department-approved handgun and locked it into position with a two-handed grip. Tables were upended to provide additional shelter. The gray-haired 'congresswoman' yanked off her wig to reveal jet black hair beneath, and Ziva grinned viciously.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs, posing as yet another congressman, pointed his handgun at the would-be assault squad. "Try it," he invited. "We're all wearing bulletproof vests, and there's another dozen Marines out back itching to get their own crack at you."

"Put your weapons down, gentlemen," Director Shepherd told them, moving in, her own gun steady in her hands.

One hesitated. They could all see the decision rattling around in his head. He jerked his eyes up to where Ansarad was crouched on the floor behind his bodyguard.

He brought up his weapon.

The terrorist was dead before the second bullet clattered from his weapon. No fewer than six handguns wisped smoke from the recoil. Blood seeped from his chest.

"Anyone else?" Gibbs wanted to know.

There weren't. Illegal firearms dropped to the carpeted floor, and arms were raised in surrender. The Marines moved in to take custody of the men and the weapons.

"Wait." Ali Ansarad stepped down from the stage, from behind the podium that had saved his life. Chelid and Ducky trailed after him and, after a moment's thought, so did his wife Nadya. "I would know the names of the men who are trying to kill me. I would look upon their dog faces."

"Come away, Ali. I'm frightened!" It was Nadya. It was the first time he'd actually heard her speak, Gibbs thought.

"Then go to the limo," Ansarad ordered curtly. "I must know who wishes me dead. There will be retribution, in this country and at home."

"Please, let it be. Come back to Afghanistan with me, and leave this country of devils behind." Nadya was openly pleading by now.

"Is there some reason that I should not know, first wife?" Ansarad turned on her.

"No! But…" she trailed off. "I will go to the car." She gathered up her skirts, ready to hurry out.

Another woman appeared at the entrance, flanked by two Marines. The woman was blonde, young, and gloriously pregnant.

She was also pissed. "Going somewhere, Nadya?"

"RoseMarie!" Nadya was shocked to see her husband's second wife appear. "You…you were in the hospital…"

"Yeah, I was. Not anymore, sweetie." RoseMarie took Nadya by the arm and turned her around to face the scene inside. "What say we figure out just who would want Ali and me dead?"

"No!" Nadya tried to pull away, then realized how it would look. "I mean, we should return…It is not seemly for women—"

Gibbs moved closer. "Is there some reason we shouldn't check under the masks?"

"No. They are only hired men. I mean, that is what I would do, if I wanted to kill someone—" Nadya was babbling, and she knew it.

It was like taking candy from a baby. There was no challenge. "Know somebody by the name of Omar Kardez?" Gibbs inquired.

"She should," RoseMarie told him grimly. "It's her second cousin."

"Isn't that a coincidence?" Ziva remarked to the air. "Almost as much of a coincidence as finding him at the last dinner for Chief Ansarad with an assassination tool."

"I had nothing to do with this, husband!" Nadya backed away, turning pleading eyes onto Ansarad. "You must believe me!"

"Why, Nadya? Why must I believe you? Is it that you wish your own son to inherit, instead of those from my first marriage?"

She broke before their eyes. "You _owe_ it to them!" Nadya screeched. "You _owe_ it to our people! Those two of Zuhaila's get will turn our people into _heathens!_ You must turn our country over to _my_ sons! _My_ sons, Ali! Not Zuhaila's, and not the vile offspring of this American cur! _My_ sons, Ali!" She kicked at the dead body, the one man who had had the courage—or foolishness—to stand up for his beliefs. "They know! They know how to be true sons of the Afghanis!"

"What, you mean these guys?" Gibbs's tone was unexpectedly amiable. "You can get up now, DiNozzo."

"Thanks, boss." The 'dead' man sat up, pulling off his black ski mask. "Did you know that these things are hot?" He grinned, brushing away at the damp 'blood' that still dotted his chest. "You gotta love special effects."

The rest of the 'terrorists' pulled off their own black ski masks, revealing faces of non-Afghani heritage. Three blonds, another four with sandy brown hair, several of African heritage a few generations back, all with wide grins at having taken part in the charade. Not one looked anything close to Afghani.

Ansarad turned on his first wife. "Why, Nadya? I have offered you nothing but respect. Why _RoseMarie?_"

"Respect." Nadya spat on the floor. "You shame me, Ali! You take an American woman to your bed and you forget your countrymen. You forget your wife!"

"I forget nothing," Ansarad corrected coldly. "I offered you everything that I offered to RoseMarie. You were her equal in all things."

"Everything but your love, Ali!"

RoseMarie snarled, "If you didn't nag him all the time, you could have had that, too, Nadya. Instead, you tried to have me killed?"

"For that, and for all that you have done! You are a disgrace to all women! I have tried to steer him toward the proper path, and you beguiled him every chance you got! You have seduced an honorable man, and turned him into your toy! You deserve death a thousand times!"

"So, let's get this straight." RoseMarie put her hands on her hips. "You tried to kill me because you nag him and I don't. Why, you little bitch!"

The former Lt. RoseMarie Lundquist balled up her fist, drew back, and landed a knuckle sandwich worthy of Sugar Ray himself.

Nadya Ansarad went down.

* * *

"The swelling was actually quite glorious by the time Mrs. Ansarad returned to the hotel," Ducky reported. "The former lieutenant clearly has not forgotten all of her training during her military years. Wife Number One will have a black eye worthy of a prize fighter for the next week, at least."

"I was impressed by RoseMarie's fluency in Pashtun," Ziva remarked wistfully. "Her command of Pashtun invective was extremely…thorough."

"You mean, you learned some new phrases, Ziva?" Tony asked, grinning.

"No. But I did acquire some additional uses for old ones. Rather inventive, was Lt. Lundquist. I never thought of a camel in quite that way."

None of them was about to ask how Gibbs had managed to acquire the rights to the VIP suite in the hospital, and none of them was about to question their good luck. It was large, and it contained comfortable chairs to sit in—a marked contrast to the surroundings in which McGee had first awoken.

McGee looked a hell of a lot better than the last time Gibbs had seen him. Awake, was one big change. Not bleeding into the night, was another. Gibbs remembered helping Ziva and Tony to lift him out of the rubble of the safe house and onto the stretcher, wondering if the man's heart would continue to beat long enough to get him to medical help. McGee still needed help just to lift a spoonful of broth to his mouth—Ziva was assisting with that—but the computer geek would be out of the hospital in no time, ready for DiNozzo's pointed barbs.

Abby, too. Gibbs had wheeled her into McGee's room in a wheelchair but that, he decided, wasn't good enough. Sliding his arms under her, he lifted her up out of the wheelchair.

"Gibbs?" Abby put her arms around his neck.

"This will be more comfortable, Abby." He lowered her gently into a reclining chair, helping her to readjust the coverings. He winced at the way she looked; his lab rat really shouldn't have a black eye from pieces of falling debris when the safe house had collapsed on top of her. McGee had saved her from being staked through the chest, but Ducky had privately told Gibbs that the Forensics scientist had suffered chest contusions in the fall out, and would require monitoring for the next twenty-four hours. Twenty-four, forty-eight, or more; Gibbs didn't care. It was enough to see her face light up when she saw him.

"Thanks, Gibbs." It wasn't just for the chair. Abby's eyes shone with gratitude.

Ducky turned to McGee. "Timothy, I understand your reluctance to partake of narcotic analgesia but there is no reason to continue your abstention. You have faced your demons, and you have conquered them."

McGee winced, trying not to move. "That's okay, Ducky. I'm fine."

"No, you're not," Ducky insisted. "Ziva tells me that there is every reason to believe that you will remember things only during your waking hours, that your dreams will be as pleasant as they have been before this episode."

"It's true, McGee." Ziva nodded. "I expect that Gibbs and Director Shepherd will wish to question you further about your experiences, but your sleep should be uninterrupted by any lingering memories."

"I insist, dear boy." Ducky inserted a slender needle into the intravenous line that snaked into McGee's arm. "There. Now, don't you feel better?"

"Um." McGee's eyes were already starting to close. "I still don't get it."

"Get what, McGee?" Gibbs seated himself halfway between McGee's bed and Abby's chair, the instinctive need to protect both of his wounded chicks apparent.

McGee, freed by narcotics from inhibition, waved his untethered hand. "All this. Who was trying to kill who? Were they trying to kill Chief Ansarad, or one of his wives?"

"It was actually a rather ingenious plot on the part of several people," Ducky remarked, placing the used syringe into its designated receptacle. "Ali Ansarad has gauged the tenor of his people quite carefully; the majority wish to become more in tune with the rest of the world, wish to extend their business dealings as quickly as possible. Ali has led that charge, but he perceives himself as still part of the old guard. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that with his passing, the sons of his dead first wife Zuhaila would inherit his mantel and move his people forward. To achieve that goal, he arranged for his own assassination. Ifti Chelid was in on the plot," Ducky added thoughtfully. "He was not in favor of it, but he was party to the plan."

"But why here?" Tony asked. "I mean, it would probably have been a lot easier to arrange back in the old home town."

"Several reasons, DiNozzo." Gibbs took up the story. "One, by getting himself 'murdered' here in America, he stirs up support for his cause through guilt, that we let it happen. More American money flows back to Afghanistan, to support fledgling businesses. Two: he's worried about Lt. Lundquist. He knows that if she's left alone in Afghanistan without him, she stands a good chance of being murdered herself. His two oldest sons appreciate what she brings to the table, but they don't have the same affection for her that he does. Any child she bears could end up being either a loyal member of the family—or a rival for power. By arranging his own murder in this country, he makes sure that RoseMarie can remain here in the States in safety."

Ziva nodded. "Which is where you came in, McGee. Ansarad insisted that Ducky be his contact here, knowing that he would select Gibbs's team to provide security. You were chosen, and not at random, to receive the Scorpion's Flail, so that you would enable the assassination to take place. Contrary to the usual technique, you were not given any instructions to kill yourself afterward, a fact that puzzled me at first, as did the assassins' failure to wound any of the party-goers during the initial attempt. Lack of competence did not appear to be an adequate explanation. We now know that Chief Ansarad gave instructions that as few people as possible be killed or injured. It was not his intent to cause collateral damage."

"Then we have the woman scorned." Tony leaned back in his chair, and it creaked. "Nadya finds out about the plan and she's already pissed that Ansarad is listening to RoseMarie rather than her, so Nadya quietly arranges to have RoseMarie off-ed at the same time."

"Which is where the sniper bullet came in," Abby said from her comfortable chair. "Gibbs, this is like a soap opera. What about the second cousin, Omar Whatever His Name Is?"

"Omar Kardez." Gibbs nodded. "He was Nadya's connection. He came into this country, expecting to present himself at the time of Ansarad's death and take over the delegation, which would give him the power back home to try to take over instead of Ansarad's sons. Instead, he finds that things are going downhill. Not only is Ansarad still alive, so is RoseMarie, who is leading Ansarad further from the old ways. Kardez expects to give the poison pen to Nadya, so that she can visit RoseMarie in the hospital and do the job herself."

"We nab him, and intercept that plan," Ziva said with satisfaction.

Gibbs agreed. "Now Nadya is getting nervous. The person who can reveal all is McGee; after all, he is the one who is going to tell us that RoseMarie was never part of the plot. That, Nadya believes, will lead us to look for the sniper, which will lead us back to her. Nadya knows that we expect McGee to attempt suicide, so she escapes from her handlers at the hospital, dresses up like a nurse, and sneaks into McGee's room."

"Unfortunately," Ducky said, "or fortunately, as the case may be, she didn't know the first thing about slitting a man's wrists. She botched the job thoroughly."

"I'm grateful for that," McGee said, slurring his words.

"As are we all, dear boy. We shall have to explore where she obtained the additional morphine that she administered to you during her attack on you, but we may never have that answer." Ducky gestured to the air. "Nevertheless, she began to panic. She sent the remainder of her minions to first cover her tracks, and then to complete the task of assassinating her husband."

"Which they never got to do," Abby said delightedly. "You and me, McGee. We stopped 'em. Gibbs says that we flattened 'em with the house before Gibbs and Tony and Ziva ever got there. Gibbs got the rest of Ali's guys at the Sour Pickles Studio, but we took out Nadya's goons at the safe house."

"Great." McGee could have lived more happily without that honor. He pushed for more intel. "What's going to happen to her? To them, I mean?"

Ziva's face contained pure amusement. "It appears to be a very tricky diplomatic situation, McGee. On one hand, the Justice Department wishes to place Nadya Ansarad under arrest for the attempted murder of an NCIS agent."

McGee winced. "Right."

"On the other hand, jailing the wife of a pro-Western Afghani diplomat is hardly an act designed to promote international harmony," she told him, adding, "I should have liked to have been a bug on the lamp in the room in which that discussion took place."

"Fly on the wall, Ziva."

"Don't be silly, Tony. That would be noticed. A bug should be placed in a position where it is likely to be overlooked." Ziva turned her smile back onto McGee. "I understand that they compromised by requesting Chief Ansarad's hastened departure, along with his entourage."

McGee sighed in relief.

"Didn't work, McGee," Gibbs said gruffly.

McGee looked up in alarm. "Boss? They're still here?"

"Yup. Right here in this hospital, in fact." Gibbs was enjoying himself. "Not the first wife, though. She's back at the hotel, with a couple of female guards to make sure that she doesn't go anywhere. Or call anyone," he added thoughtfully. "We've had enough problems with her trying to kill two people; don't want her to get ideas about a third."

"A third? Someone else in Chief Ansarad's family?" McGee was thoroughly confused, and only a small portion of that was due to the pain-killer Ducky had administered.

"Yup." Gibbs took pity on his geek. "A little baby girl."

Abby grinned broadly. "Really sweet, McGee. Looks mostly like her mother. They haven't named her yet, but RoseMarie tells me that her middle name will be Louise, after RoseMarie's own mother."

"A girl." McGee blinked. "A girl. I thought…"

"So'd we all, McGee," Gibbs agreed. "So'd the lieutenant. Seems like her calendar was a little off. But everyone's healthy and happy—"

"And alive," Tony put in. "Let's not forget that part. Alive."

"Alive," Gibbs agreed. An expression crossed his face, one that said _and my two geeks are also alive. Life is good._

Ducky leaned over to check the pulse of one of the geeks, the man barely able to keep his eyes open. "And on that note, we should leave Timothy to his rest. You, too, my dear," he told Abby. "I have it on good authority that Chief and Mrs. Ansarad intend to host a celebration in honor of the new arrival before their departure, and I have yet to discover whether it will be conducted in the Western fashion, or according to their own customs wherein the men and women enjoy separate but equal parties." One corner of his mouth quirked upward. "Besides, I have not yet finished twitting Ali about the arrival of his _daughter_. He was so convinced that it would be a son!"

"C'mon, Abby. Time to get you back for a nap." Gibbs scooped her up off of the recliner and deposited her gently into the wheelchair for the trip back to her room.

"Gibbs!" It was a token protest only. Bereft of caffeine, the lab rat was drooping.

"Let me take you, Abby. I need to ask what would be an appropriate gift from an Israeli Mossad officer to give the daughter of an Afghani chieftain who was born on American soil. This too will be a deliciously intricate diplomatic puzzle." Ziva took over the handles of the wheelchair, leading Tony and Ducky out of the room.

Gibbs paused by McGee's bedside, watching the lines in his computer geek's face that didn't quite smooth out despite the closed eyes, despite the sleep enforced by more narcotics.

He leaned over to whisper, "No more dreams, McGee. That's an order."

The facial lines vanished. McGee heaved a sigh, and relaxed, letting the morphine do its work.

Gibbs nodded, and turned away.

* * *

The End.


End file.
